


Predilection

by Silverlace_Vine



Series: Perspective [3]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, Artistic License for characters who haven't been seen in the movies yet, Dom/sub, For Science!, Kidnapping, M/M, Masturbation, Mind Control, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Phone Sex, Polyamory, Porn Watching, References to Suicide, Safewords, Steve likes to draw, Subspace, Threesome, Threesome - M/M/M, Tony has a real job, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Video Chat, hurt/comfort elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-12
Updated: 2012-12-07
Packaged: 2017-11-11 23:56:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 12
Words: 44,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/484321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silverlace_Vine/pseuds/Silverlace_Vine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony gets called away on business.</p><p>Sequel to "Perspective".</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

 

Being a self-employed futurist means occasionally scouting for talent, and being that Tony is no longer CEO of his own company, his schedule is slightly less flexible when it comes to actually doing anything for the benefit of Stark Industries.  It's a yearly jaunt across the globe, visiting genius weirdoes who need funding and support but are too afraid of going for government contracts, and it's probably Tony's favorite form of business trip. Normally he'd postpone, but Pepper won't let him put it off without a good reason, and he's not ready to tell her about the newest developments in his relationship.   

It's too soon for them to be apart.  A few days of camping out in the living room, watching classic movies and waking up in a warm, sunlit square of the couch aren't nearly enough.  For most people, resolving the days of tension and frustration would have involved cutting out on work for a few days to spend it in bed;  for Tony and Bruce and Steve, it's not that simple.  It means exploring boundaries and comfort levels, learning what's okay and what isn't; that takes more time and effort than a wild three-day-weekend.

There's a part of Tony-- the part that doesn't like himself very much-- that thinks this might be a good idea.  A couple of weeks alone might give them a chance to think this whole thing over again, maybe realize that they don't really need him, or that it's crazy, or something.  And objectively, that would be for the best, says that part.   The other part of him says that's all _complete bullshit_ , but it's not as loud.

"All right, I should be back in a couple of weeks," Tony says, as reassuring as he can manage.  Shortly, he'll be on his way to the airport, and he's already half-dreading it.   "You're gonna be okay, right? I thought about putting up a hamster bottle in the lab, but I didn't have enough time to make that much coffee." 

Bruce just nods; there's no disappointment in his posture, because _of course_ something like this would happen. He doesn't even have it in him to be surprised.  "We'll be okay. Have a good trip, Tony."

"Call us once in awhile, all right?" Steve clasps Tony's wrist, and the faintly desperate strength in his grip undercuts the stoicism on his face.   

Tony's other hand reaches up to curl around the nape of Steve's neck, drawing him forward into a kiss, slow and lingering, and he pulls away only reluctantly when he realizes they haven't actually done it enough for Steve to have the rhythm down yet.  That thought hurts, and he resolves on the spot to try to get back early and correct that particular oversight.  He reaches for Bruce in the same way, and is surprised when Bruce takes Tony's face in both hands and kisses him briefly, fiercely.

"The sooner you go, the sooner you can come home,"  Bruce murmurs.  "So get out of here, already."

Tony forces a grin that manages to be just careless enough, and heads off, leaving the two of them alone to count the days while he hopes to God he hasn't fucked up irrevocably yet.

 

\--

 

Tuesday afternoon, day four, finds them in the lab.  Steve's taken to camping out at a borrowed drafting table, reading or studying or drawing while Bruce works on... whatever it is that he works on, Steve has no idea what any of the meters on his console mean.  

It's been storming almost constantly, but the hope that it signals Thor's quick return dulls out when the weather forecast predicts it straight through to the weekend; it hardly matters, the lab blocks out all the sound of the rain anyway.  Leaving the Tower for anything beyond walking distance just isn't worth the trouble;  they could just as easily borrow a car, except Steve's never driven anything but motorcycles and Bruce would rather avoid the possibility of road rage in Manhattan.

He looks up from his latest smattering of doodles when he sees Bruce fuss with his monitor, and drag something that looks like a molecular diagram off of the screen and into the air around them.  "Got something?"

"Paraffin wax, with a couple of additives," Bruce responds easily.  "I think I've found a good base to make crayons for the Hulk." 

"Is it weird that my first assumption is that at least one of those additives is the Serum? Seems like that stuff really gets around." Steve sits up, amused and pleased.  Bruce hasn't talked much in a few days;  he doesn't talk much generally, but without Tony around to force him to talk or to make up the difference himself, the silence has been deafening.  

He smiles, just slightly, and expands the projection.  "No.  Technically speaking, you'd be right; a few of the compounds isolated from the Serum would be going into this, hypothetically."  Bruce taps the project name at the top of his console window:   _CapColors_.   

Steve reads it and laughs, maybe a little flattered as he comes over to inspect the diagram. It's all Greek to him, but he pays attention anyway.  "Tell me how it works?"

"The same way normal crayons do, just designed to be slightly spongey to accommodate the Hulk's grip."  Bruce makes a few quick modifications to the projection, and then squishes it, watching the individual molecules bunch up and realign into a more crystalline structure.  "The pressure forces them into a solid shape to be used like a drawing tool, the rest of the time it's about the consistency of a marshmallow. That way it'll be harder for him to break one by accident."

"Always a plus. There's nothing more irritating than breaking a perfectly good new crayon."  The heartfelt, genuine way he says it-- as if Steve truly believes that unnecessary new-crayon death is a small but mournful everyday tragedy-- puts a legitimate grin on Bruce's face.  

"I'll work hard on that part, then."  Bruce turns the projection again, and adjusts a few of its settings.  The light fades from its standard, intense blue to a pretty jewel-green.  "Now, here's the fun part:  the dye used to color the wax is treated with a catalyst that responds to gamma radiation, but only while being directly exposed."   He waves his hand over the projection, and where it touches it, the jewel-green fades into blue and then purple, all the way down the spectrum to yellow.  "Since the Hulk emits fluctuating levels of gamma radiation depending on how much energy he's expending, the dye will change color as long as it's still in contact with his skin."

Steve's smile widens as he starts to understand.  "So it can be any color he wants, as long as he can learn to control himself enough to make it change?" 

"And it gives him an incentive _to_ control himself, if he decides he wants to."  Bruce nods. 

"That's swell, Bruce."  He reaches and claps a hand companionably on the doctor's shoulder, just as an excuse to touch, to thank and congratulate him.  "Tony's gonna love it.  Heck, _I_ love it. Can you make it do that for anybody? Or is it strictly a gamma thing?"

"Probably not yet. It might work with some other brain wave, maybe, but it's not my area of expertise. But I might be able to call around to some experts, sometime."  Bruce smiles up at him, a little sheepish.  "Do you... would you want one, for yourself?"

"Who _wouldn't_?"  Steve runs his hand through the projection, watching the little molecules run through a little blazing rainbow of neon light.  "Do you do art at all?"

Bruce shakes his head.  "Not since high school art classes, I'm afraid, and I was never any good at it."

"Well, I do, and if I could change the color of my paints to exactly the colors I'm seeing in my head? Forget about it, I'd probably never do anything else for the rest of my life, if I wasn't Captain America."   He leans over for his sketchbook and flips to a page that has all six Avengers in profile, facing the right edge of the paper.  They're all in plain black-and-white, with a few tasteful colored accents meant more for symbolism than any real accuracy.  "Especially for skin tones, they don't make colored pencils in the same pink as Natasha's cheeks, or the same brown as Director Fury's.  I mean, you can get by if you layer them and mix them properly, and the effect is nice, and really skin tones are made up of hundreds of variations anyway, but sti--- wow, I'm boring you half to death, aren't I?"   He blushes slightly when he realizes he's been rambling. 

Bruce chuckles, and shakes his head.  "No, not at all; it's okay to be a geek in here, Steve, I promise. I didn't know it was that important to you, that's all. You don't really talk about that kind of thing very much."

"Sorry. Most of the important stuff on me is in the files; before the Serum I wasn't very interesting."  Steve shrugs.  "But I was on my way to art school, at the time."

"Art school? You mean for portraiture, fine-art type of painting, or commercial art?"

"Billboards, yeah."  Steve laughs a bit, and sets his sketchbook down.  "You know Alphonse Mucha?  There was this one spot where I got beat up a lot, behind one of the brownstones, and the lady who lived there used to reproduce some of his works on wax paper and then hang them in her windows.  Even if I was flat on my back and gushing blood out of my nose, I didn't mind so much if it meant I got to just hang back and look at the nice pictures for a minute."   

"They must have really been something, then."

It's a subtle change in tone; Steve would even guess that Bruce must have practiced hiding it at some point in his life, but not well enough to hide it from the ears of someone who loves him.  It's in the faint tremor of his hands as he sits down, the tight line of his lips as he presses them shut. He doesn't say a word, and he doesn't have to, and when Steve takes too long to decide on what to say to console him, Bruce picks up on it, and exhales slowly.  Breathing exercise.

"Tony told you, didn't he?"

Steve screws his eyes shut, knowing he's fucked up, and nods.  "I'm sorry, Bruce, I didn't mean to--"

"No, it's okay."  It's _not_ okay, he's just saying that. Or trying to convince himself it is.  "It's not important anymore, that part of my life has been over for a long time.  And your experiences don't have to reflect mine, or vice-versa, to be valid."  Bruce recites it like it's something he read out of a self-help book on abuse survival; he probably had, at some point.  "The art nouveau pictures-- they made you happy when things were going bad for you, right?"

"Yeah, they did."

"Then they were a good thing, and that's all that matters."   He smiles, and that cloying, weary sadness seems to roll in over him like a fog, weighing down his clothes and the corners of his mouth and his dreams.

Steve reaches for Bruce's hands, following the lines of his wrists up to his arms and his shoulders, warm palms gently coming to rest against the sides of his neck.  "I'm sorry," he repeats.  "The only reason Tony told me is because he thought I should know, so I wouldn't say anything ignorant, but I did it anyway."

"I know."  Bruce leans into the touch, his own hands lightly reaching to clasp around Steve's wrists.  "Really, it's okay.  Finish your story, I really do want to hear it."

Steve lingers close for just a few seconds more, and then draws away slowly.  He clears his throat.   "I just really liked them. I liked that they could look so much like stained glass without being anything but ink and paper," he explains.  "I wanted to learn how to do that, only bigger, something you could see from the street, you know?"

Bruce nods.  "Have you seen much in the way of digital art yet, Steve?"

"...Just the projections," Steve answers, and gestures to the floating prototype-crayon.  "But that doesn't sound like what you mean."

The good doctor's smile broadens into something much more sincere.  

 

\--

 

The past few nights have had an awkward aftertaste, mainly because the standard evening activity involves watching classic movies and having dinner, and with Tony gone, it doesn't feel right to hunt through his DVD collection just to look for something they can watch without him.  Browsing the internet for digital artwork becomes a very favorable alternative for the nightly ritual of curling up on the couch and falling asleep together.

"This," Bruce says, "is deviantArt.  It's an online community for artists; everyone has a gallery of their own, and you can search different types of art and subject matter to browse."

" _Anyone_ can have _their own gallery_?"  Steve blanches, and looks up at the screen with nothing short of open awe.  

"Yeap. It's free of charge, and there's no requirements for skill or notability. It's for everyone, and it's got artists from all over the world, from professionals to little kids. I think some people even get accounts for their pets.  You can look at their work, comment on it, collect it, whatever. Of course, ninety percent of everything is crap, but that's true for anything."  Bruce types 'art nouveau' into the search bar, and lets Steve take it from there.

He clicks obsessively, zooms in on everything, and finds very little that doesn't delight him even if he's not impressed by the technical merits of the piece.  "Oh, _wow_.  How do they _do_ this, Bruce? Is it-- do they do the artwork and then take a picture of it, or...?"  

"Well, some people use scanners for traditional media, but I think most people use a tablet." Bruce doesn't take very long to find one in the tool cabinet.  Tony's designs come in two forms: the hyper-realistic, digital-based, rendered-through-3D-diagrams type, and the doodled-on-a-cocktail-napkin-in-a-fit-of-genius type;  since JARVIS manages the former and the latter tend to end up in the trash, Tony hasn't needed an actual drawing tablet in some time.    

He hands it off to Steve.  "It works more or less like a regular pen and paper, but I've heard traditional artists tend to take a while to get comfortable with them."

Steve holds the stylus and ponders the hyper-modern technological marvel in his hands. It's StarkTech and, therefore, cutting edge. Smooth as a mirror, light as a feather, sleek as satin, and wireless.   The little blue light indicating it's synched with JARVIS blinks to life, and Steve gently moves the tip of the stylus on its the surface, watching the cursor on the screen move with it. "Oh, keen...  Can you show me how to draw on it?"

Bruce purchases the latest version of Photoshop and loads it up without a second's hesitation, making space for it on Steve's section of the house server. He feels justified in spending the money for it, not just because he knows Tony would approve, but because it's a present that Tony wouldn't think of on his own.

The jargon is mostly lost on Steve at first. Resolution, dpi, RGB, stuff like that, it's all completely alien. The menus are weird and foreign and the so-called Tools window, with its little smorgasbord of buttons that don't really look enough to Steve like the things they're supposed to represent, is kind of an annoyance more often than not.  Bruce is, for the first time ever, equally ignorant, and doesn't know jack about artwork anyway. But slowly, Steve begins to figure it out for himself.

It doesn't feel as much like a pen as he wishes. It's like holding a calligraphy brush tipped with a swizzle stick and trying to write on a varnished table with it, which is weird, but not completely hopeless.  The tutorials, for the most part, aren't helpful, and presume a lot of base knowledge that Steve just doesn't have, so he decides to wing it and just figure it out on his own. That's always worked out well enough for him.

"Bruce? Can I draw you, just to practice?"

Bruce blinks, a little confused.  "You draw me all the time. You don't need my permission, it's okay."

"That's different, I just draw you from memory, usually. I mean, will you.. um. Will you sit, for me?"  Steve smiles, unbelievably happy to find some kind of technology he can bond with. Conveniences are conveniences, but so much of the modern age is so impersonal, so cold, even with all the improvements to communication; his enthusiastic embrace of something as simple as one of Tony's leftover old tablets is nothing short of charming.

Bruce smiles, and moves to the seat across from Steve. How can anyone say 'no' to that face?  "How do you want me?" 

If he hadn't used exactly those words, and if he hadn't had that warm, affectionate smile on his face when he said it, Steve would just tell him he could make himself comfortable however he liked.  That's what he had been planning on, anyway.  But Bruce's phrasing makes Steve look him over, gauging the set of his shoulders, the lines of his arms, his waist; the loose slacks that hide the leanness of his legs, the socks that cover his comparitively-little feet.  

"Nude," he answers.  He manages to hold his confidence until Bruce's eyes start to get a little wide, and then he blushes.  "Unless you're not comfortable with that, I mean, it's--"

"You want to draw me like one of your French girls?"

"...Excuse me?"

"Ah, nevermind. We'll get to that movie eventually."  Bruce just smiles, and calmly undresses himself. 

 

\--

 

He's never had the occasion to draw a body that he's ever wanted before, and he should have thought of that before he set out to do it.  It makes him work that much harder at learning to work with the stylus; losing the tactile response, the scratch of graphite on paper, is crippling until he learns to think of it as a felt-tip pen on glass.  Gradually, with a few practice strokes, and a few helpful tips from the internet, he begins producing lines he can get behind.   He opts to stick with just black and white for now, and hopes that'll be enough.

Bruce is beautiful, in a very simple, human way; his body is indelicate, all soft skin over round, smooth muscle, his face devoid of sharp angles, covered in a wealth of downy hair.  Compared to the hyperathletic frames of the other Avengers, there's something about Bruce's unclothed body that strikes Steve as being touchable in its overt masculinity; something accessible and real that isn't quite limited to the fact that he's sitting only a few feet away.

It's in the set of his shoulders, muscular but not strongly defined, his neck and chest broad and firm.  His face has just enough amusement around the eyes to seem happy, but not enough to shake the weariness and the life-long fatigue that always seems to weigh on him. It's a melancholy elegance, experience and re-learned hope in the full bow of his lips, the faintest suggestion of a smile, and his five o'clock shadow, all of it framed in an unruly mess of soft, prematurely-graying curls.

It's in his hands, too; his fingers are blunt and his palms are square, earthy in their way, but there's still an uncanny grace about them.  He's used to seeing them curled around tools and machines, but seeing them relaxed, fingers loosely resting on his abdomen, makes them seem heavier, more solid.  His stomach is flat and shadowed with hair leading into the slight tapering of his waist and the arch-and-depth of his hips, the generous weight of his sex resting between his thighs.

His legs are slimmer than Steve would have guessed, probably lean from months of running and not getting enough to eat.  It makes his knees a little knobbly, the bones of his ankles more pronounced, the smallness of his surprisingly-delicate feet more striking.   

And he has scars. Little ones here and there, some fresh within a few months, others old and faded;  the oldest ones are only noticeable under an artist's scrutiny, warped with in a way that suggested he'd been very young when he'd picked them up.  Those ones are mottled and chaotic, but aged; mere relics from an unhappy time, long ago.

Still, Steve hesitates to add them to the drawing.  The part of him that embraces truth says they belong there the way any part of Bruce does, and should be honored as part of what makes Bruce who he is; the part of him that can't stand seeing innocent people harmed can't bring himself to commit them to Bruce's skin a second time.

He debates a long few moments, and then draws them in. They're part of Bruce; they deserve to be respected and acknowledged, no matter how they got there.

"Finished," he says.

Bruce smiles and sits up again.  "Can I see?"

Steve nods and lightly tosses the image from the tablet onto the screen they usually use for movies.  "It might be a little shaky, I'm not used to this thing yet, but... well, there you go."

He's quiet for a few long moments, staring, and finally ventures,  "I don't think it's shaky at all."   

For the most part, Bruce is a left-brained kind of guy, but it's hard not to be flattered. The man in the drawing is peaceful and inviting, clearly accustomed enough to being naked that he isn't self-conscious, though his body doesn't give him any reason to be.  He's scarred-up in places but otherwise well-formed, the lines of his posture suggesting that his resting pose is the same whether he's awake or asleep, and the love of the artist for the subject is clear in every half-scratched pixel.  He's seen it in Steve's other work, and it never gets old.

"You know," he muses. "Most people would just use this as an excuse to get other people naked." 

Steve grins, and saves the picture.  "It's not really my style. I think if I want to get somebody else out of their clothes, I'd want to undress them myself."   Having said that, his cheeks flush pink.  "...I guess it'd sound kind of bad if I said you could put your clothes back on now, huh?"

Bruce covers his face with his hands, and laughs.

 

\---

 

It's close to midnight and Tony is sick to fucking death of Canada.

Well, no. That's not true.  Canada's okay. Canada's great, in fact.

What he's sick of is the alleged genius ornithologist who spent six hours explaining how badly he wants to use rare bird DNA to reverse-engineer the genetic code of dinosaurs.  Cool idea, except the first item on the grant petition involves extracting the vital organs of thirty critically-endangered blue-throated macaws.

He sends a polite and informative email to the Audobon Society and considers his good deed done for the day.  Tomorrow there'll be another complete whackjob, but Tony hopes that whackjob will at least want to fling the crazy stick at a decent, non-dinosaur idea.  

Almost as an afterthought, he checks his phone before pouring himself a stiff drink, passing out in his big, cold, empty hotel-room bed and waiting for tomorrow to happen, and finds a happy surprise in the form of a message from Steve.

It's a drawing of Bruce, naked as a jaybird and looking positively _edible_ , with a note written in bright, cheerful red in the corner:

_Wish you were here!  -- S.R._

Tony knocks back a scotch and soda with a grin that he's glad nobody's around to see, because it's dopey and boyish and not at all appropriately smooth.   "Me too, Cap," he says to the screen.  "Me, too."

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

He doesn't want to see Pepper.  Seeing Pepper means explaining himself, letting her explain herself, that awkward discomfort of realizing that you still have a life with your ex even if you haven't spoken to them about anything but work in months. 

Tony waits in the hotel lounge with a glass of white wine and watches his old dreams slowly drown in it.  He'd imagined marrying her, once. In his mind it had all seemed so perfect, everything lined up exactly how it should have, it all fit like machine parts.  But he'd been wrong about that, in the end.

He had lost her over one missed call. 

Granted that call had been important: It was the call he made just before he made the suicide run into the portal.  The call that hadn't connected, but he left open anyway, because he wanted her face to be the last thing he saw with living eyes.  The call that JARVIS had to tell him he should  make, or he wouldn't have thought of it at all. 

He looks back on it now with a wrenching twist of shame in his stomach, because he didn't realize what it meant until weeks, months later, after she'd tried so hard to tell him she couldn't take it anymore and he just wouldn't let her go.   Now, when he remembers, he just sees tears welling up in those beautiful eyes as she tells him she can't live a real life, constantly wedged between missed calls and emergency news reports and not being able to tell if he's alive or dead inside the suit.  In his memory, she begs him to understand, and he does, but only after she's been gone almost a month.

Tony takes his phone out of his pocket, thinks about calling home, just to hear their voices, to remind himself that home is right where he left it.  But then he hears the click of her heels come in the door, and he puts it away.

When Pepper approaches his table, his heart skips once and Tony changes his mind about not wanting to see her, like he always does, because she's _perfect_.  From the very tips of those slick stiletto heels to the matching silver chopstick holding her hair in a neat-but-not-anal-retentive little twist at the top of her head, she's flawless.  

He stands up, pulls out a chair for her.    "Miss Potts."

She smiles back, and just like always, it's like the whole room just lit up with her.  She takes her seat gracefully; he sits back down with her.  "Mister Stark."

"It's good to see you," he says, and surprises himself that he doesn't have to lie.  "...You know, I'm actually kind of bad at small talk--"

"I know, and that's why I thought we could talk about actual business--"

"--and talking about business is really boring and it's not what I really want to know, so--"

"--because that's what we're actually here for."

They stare at each other across the table. Yeah. Things aren't that different.

Tony picks up his wineglass.  "All right, fine, you first.  Tell me it's not more dinosaur people. Seriously, we only do good-guy stuff,  Stark Industries will not support any endeavor that was outlined as a bad idea by a science fiction novel."

Pepper slides her tablet out of her handbag and cues up a handful of files, which Tony begins combing through.  "I did a little research on some of the names you sent me, and I found a few things.  No dinosaurs, no cloning, nothing like that; they're an automotive club."

"Automotive club, huh? Cars are cool, all right."   A handful of profiles come up. He mostly ignores the names in favor of Pepper's notes in the corners:  sure enough, they're shop geeks.  This one's into cars, that one's into aviation, this one's into heavy machinery.  "...Why does it say they're spending money on construction equipment? What are they building?"

"I don't know. That's what we're going there to find out."   Pepper slides another window forward. "I like the possibilities.  Most of the people on that list have some halfway-decent credentials. Nothing stellar or they wouldn't be operating in the middle of nowhere, but decent."

"Sounds fun."  Tony closes it and slides the tablet back.   "Is that all for business?"

"Yes. Go ahead." Pepper tries not to make the inevitable sigh more put-upon than it is.

"Tell me everything. I want to know.  Do you see my face? This face is _interested_ in your life. All of it. Creepily, uncomfortably, you would be justified in suing me for making this disturbing stalker face at your personal life, Pep, and no, you can't have that in writing."

Pepper rolls her eyes in the most dignified and graceful way possible.  "Harold and I are doing very well, thank you. He wants me to meet his family next month," she ventures carefully.  "His cousin is getting married and I'm his date to the wedding."

Tony sinks a little, the image of Pepper in a wedding gown flitting across his mind's eye like the memory of a bitter snowstorm.  "If he pops the question, are you going to say yes?"   

"He's not going to ask me to marry him."  

"How do you know he won't?"

"Because that's not the way he does things."

"That's _exactly_ how he does things. He takes you to his cousin's wedding, he shows you around to all his family, they just adore you because, let's face it, you're _leagues_ above anything he's ever brought home before--"

"You're a master of the backhanded compliment, but you're still way off-base, Tony."

"--and then you're catching the bouquet, and then Grandma Hogan is talking about how her great-aunt's pearls would look so _fetching_ on you," he continues on, heedless.  "And then they start asking Happy when he's going to give them _grandkids_ , and then they look at _you_..."

Pepper's just giving him that flat look that he can never quite pin down.  "He's not going to ask me to marry him."

"But what if he does?"

"Tony, I'm not answering that. I don't have to answer that, it's none of your business. But he's not going to ask me to marry him, so it's a moot point."

"You haven't called me in months." 

" _You_ haven't called _me_ in months." 

"You _dumped_ me, I'm not supposed to call you. That's how it works, right?"  Tony makes a light sweep of his hand across the table, gesturing.  "I was stupid to think I could make it work, I know that now. And I'm sorry for all the problems that must have caused for you, especially all the parts where you.. y'know, were almost killed or blown up."   Later he'll be repulsed by how casually he can say those words, as if Pepper should have been signing a waiver every time they went out to dinner. God, maybe she'd been right the whole time.  "...If you want me out of your life, that's fine, I can deal with it, just don't ask me to be thrilled about it."

"I _don't_ want you out of my life."  Pepper meets his eyes, maybe a little hurt by the implication.  "Tony, you didn't do anything wrong.  The stakes just got too high for me."  She reaches for his hand, and is visibly relieved when he accepts it, and squeezes back.  "...I'm not cut out for the life I'd be living if I stayed, but this-- being Iron Man, an Avenger, being a hero? That was _always_ you, it just took you awhile to put the suit together.  Be honest, Tony:  aren't you happier, now?" 

She's talking about Iron Man. She's talking about fighting for the benefit of the world, getting out of weapons manufacture and protecting humanity from stuff that no standing army is prepared to confront.  And, naturally, she's right.  

But Tony's thoughts don't go to Loki or the Chitauri or the nightmare he saw on the other side of the portal before the EMP threw him into absolute darkness.   They go to Bruce, sitting at his workstation, popping blueberries into his mouth while he works on their latest project. They go to Steve, standing barefoot in the living room, thumbing through the holographic displays like a pro.  And then they go to both of them together, asleep on his couch, and Tony smiles so wide he can feel his cheeks start to hurt.

" _Oh my God_. Who is she? You _asshole_ , here I am thinking that I've completely ruined our whole relationship and I'm _apologizing to you_ and you're sitting there thinking about your somebody else. I'm an _idiot_."   Pepper covers her face with her hands. "You let me just _sit_ there and say all of that--"

"Pep, it's not like that."  

She stares at him.

"Okay, it's kind of like that."  He shrinks a little.  "...Okay, fine, that's exactly how it is, but it's different from what you're thinking." 

"Who is she? Because if it's that Everheart woman, I swear to God, I will steal the suit and frame you for her murder, she's disgusting."

"Bruce."

She takes her hands away from her face, because she can't turn those big lamplight eyes on him with them there.  This is the part where Tony should stop talking, but that face is too perfect, she looks like she wants to either throttle him or demand pictures.

"And Steve.  Well, not Steve _yet_ , but when I get back--"

"Wait. No. Stop."  Pepper holds up a finger, and Tony graciously pauses.  "First of all, are you telling me you're gay?  Because I don't think I can live with being called 'The Woman Who Turned Tony Stark Queer'."

"No, but if you want, I can tell everyone that after you, no other woman or individual man would do." 

"Fair enough.  And the Bruce in question is Bruce _Banner_.  Sweet, wonderful, turns-into-a-giant-rage-monster,  he-sent-you-a-card-on-your-birthday-even-though-he-lives-in-your-house-and-you-would-be-the-biggest-and-most-suicidal-scumbag-on-Earth-if-you-fool-around-behind-his-back Bruce Banner?"

"The one and only."

"And Steve is Steve Rogers, as in upright, frozen-in-a-block-of-ice, friends-with-your-dad-a-million-years-ago, would-never-do-anything-morally-questionable-such-as-have-a-hook-up-with-someone-who-he-knows-has-a-thing-with-someone-else Steve Rogers?"

"Captain A-fucking-merica, that's him, and may I say you are just amazing at pinning them down." 

"Tony, I'm serious, if that's what you're doing and one of them kills you over it, I'm not filing charges." 

"Okay, okay, I get it, calm down."  Tony smiles. He's not prone to blushing, but Pepper can see the very tips of his ears starting to flush a tiny, concentrated red.  "It's not like that.  We had this whole huge stupid fight about it all week, and it's all settled now, and... and it _works_.  I don't know all the PC terminology involved here, but the point is, I have them both, and they have me, and they have each other, and everything's going to be fine."

She continues staring at him, as if he's not sure she believes it.  "Are you serious?"

"Like a plague that only affects the cutest five percent of baby penguins."   Tony finishes the last of his wine, and sets the glass down as if to punctuate the statement, and then takes her hand again.  "...I can't really explain it, Pepper, so I'll just skip the details. It just makes perfect sense. If-- if you meant what you said, about how you couldn't handle living with the person I've become, then think of them as people who wouldn't want anything less than him." 

"A genius and a hero, for a genius hero?" Pepper smiles that affectionate, exasperated smile, with her perfect red-gold hair dusting her shoulders and her smoky corner-office-chic makeup, and without effort, without anything but herself, she gets it, and she gets him.  "Color me impressed."

"We're all heroes. And Steve might be an artistic genius. It sorta balances out that way."  Tony smiles.  "So. Does that mean we can go and get this work thing done with?" 

"I'm amazed you didn't call it off. You said you just had a fight with them and you haven't slept with Steve."  She stands up, and then pauses. "I can't believe I just said that."

Tony stands up with her, tosses a few bills on the table, and they head for the door looking none the worse for wear:  they still turn heads when they walk through a room, they're still Tony Stark and Pepper Potts.  "I figured you wouldn't let me.  I mean, really, would you have believed me if that was the excuse I gave you?"

"Good point." 

 

 

-

 

 

"Bruce! You're someone's favorite!" 

Those words shouldn't be terrifying.  They should be especially not-terrifying when pealed so happily from the voice of someone who somehow manages to maintain an unassailable air of purity, even as a veteran of the Second Great War, but it gives Bruce the chills anyway.

Bruce looks up from his console to where Steve is operating his tablet.  His drafting table has become littered with the trappings of a true work station:  a coffee cup, a dish that once had a sandwich on it, some hours ago, and will be brought to the sink on the next trip upstairs, some scratch paper, a couple of his art reference books.  It's a sight to behold, and suggests that Steve has finally staked out a proper place in the lab for himself.   Bruce wonders what Tony'll make of it.

"Ah. Well. That's nice?"  

"No, really, look."  Steve adjusts his monitor to swivel in Bruce's direction, proudly displaying someone's apparent approval.  "Someone added you to their Favourites." 

Bruce's face drops into the world's flattest deadpan.  "Steve? Did you put my naked ass on the internet?" 

Steve stares at him for a few seconds of emotional freefall.

"I... I didn't think of it that way at the time, but.. um, yes, I guess I did.  Only a few minutes ago. I can take it down if-- I'm sorry."

The aforementioned naked ass is absolutely posted to Steve's showroom-new deviantArt page, proudly displayed as the first piece in his gallery, Featured and everything.   The linework has been cleaned up from the original version, some of it strengthened in places to emphasize shape and mood, but it's still Bruce Banner's very naked body rendered with a soft, round Photoshop  brush.

"It's artwork, Steve, relax. I'm not offended."   Bruce pats his shoulder.  "Just.. um. Warn me next time, okay?" 

"I should have asked first; I'm sorry."  He sighs, thinking back to the art nouveau pictures and Bruce's scars. "I've just been putting my foot in my mouth every time I take a step with you, lately." 

"A little, yeah, but it doesn't bother me. You mean well; I know that.  And you own up to it and apologize, so it's not like you're just being a jerk arbitrarily."   Bruce looks up at the screen, mildly amused.  "And it's kind of flattering.  Somebody out there thinks your picture of me is worth a gold star, how can I take that as anything but a compliment?"

Steve laughs, and reaches one long arm out to wrap around Bruce's waist and tug him closer.  "Did you see the comment on it?"

"It got one?"  Bruce blinks a bit in surprise.

"Mm-hm."  Steve clicks on the image and then expertly slides the touchscreen display with his fingertip.  "See?"

Sure enough, a single comment, from the same person who awarded it the gold star: 

_beautiful subject, very naturale. so much hairrr. *_* very good flow but could use better shading. is he a real model or is he special to u? there's so much emotion in this piece! good work! +fav._

Reading it pulls a bit of a dusky pink blush on Bruce's face; he's been called a lot of things before, but it's hard not to be very flattered by the phrasing, grammatical merits aside. 

"I'm not sure how I should reply,"  Steve admits. He lets his fingers rest on the small of Bruce's back, warm on top of the fabric of his button-down.  

Bruce seems to lean into the touch without thinking, just a slight shift of balance. "Well. I'm not a model, so that should narrow it down some, right?" 

"I mean, how to express what kind of 'special to me' you are.  I'm not sure what to call you."  He looks up at Bruce from his seat at his work table, noting the rather minimal height difference now that he's sitting and the doctor is standing.   

Bruce shrugs.  "We should ask Thor when he gets back. I'm sure Asgard's probably got a name for lovers who go into battle together.. but then again, that would suit you and Tony more than you and me.  Which I think makes you and I just friends, still."

It takes Steve a second to connect what Bruce is talking about, and for that one second, he's almost hurt.   _Just friends? Really?_ But then he remembers that it's different for him, and he gets an idea. He slips one arm under Bruce's knees and picks him up, pulling a quick, surprised yelp out of him.

"Um.  Hello, there."  Bruce stares, feeling suddenly very small as he is deposited in Steve's lap.  

"Hey."  Steve's face is flushed a faint pink, but there's no shame or embarrassment that Bruce can detect.  Maybe he's just not used to being quite that forward.  "...You talked about how I might be demisexual. I looked it up, and there wasn't a lot on the subject, but what I did find seemed to ring pretty true, to me. It helped, so, thanks."

"You're welcome. I'm glad it helped you; sorry it had to be such a roundabout trip." Bruce smiles.    

"It's just how it had to be, that's all, it's okay.  But."  Steve reaches up to brush some of those loose, graying curls back away from Bruce's face, fingertips light against his skin.  "Don't say we're just friends, if you don't mean it should be platonic. This-- even if it's _just_ this-- is just as intimate as anything else would be to me."

Bruce's expression softens somewhat.  "I didn't mean to imply anything like that."  He shifts a little, adjusting for comfort.  "A lot of this is pretty new to me, to be honest." 

"Tell me about it."  Steve smiles up at him, and lets his arms drop into a light loop around Bruce's waist, finding it a little weird, but definitely nice, to have a scientist in his lap.  It's close and simple, and because he's never done this with anyone else, it's a first, and that makes it special. 

It's just an expression, but Bruce is pretty sure Steve means it, so he folds his hands and swallows.  "...I'm finally in a place where I'm not terrified of losing everything all the time. I have a home. I have work.  I have purpose. I have Tony.  And now all of a sudden I have _you_ and I don't even know what to make of you, really, you're..."

Steve just looks up at him, questioningly, and doesn't seem to need to prompt him. 

"...You're unreal."  He lowers his gaze to his hands.  "You were given a serum that altered your body to reflect what a good heart you have, and _look_ at you.  I was terrified of you when we met; did you know that?"

"No, I didn't.  Why would you be afraid of me?" Steve's eyes widen a little.  Bruce has never struck him as very fearful; nervous, maybe, but not _afraid_ of anything. 

"You're a soldier. It's in everything you do, even your posture. There's a General out there who thinks my body is property of the U.S. Army, and the only reason he hasn't come here to reposess me is because Stark Industries would make his life Hell, and he knows it.  Soldiers terrify me, and moreover, they terrify the Hulk."   Bruce closes his eyes.   "It's different now, obviously.  You're still a soldier, but you just... I feel safe around you, more stable. I don't have a good reason why."

"But that's good. I really wouldn't want you to be afraid of me, even just by association."  Steve lifts one hand to rest against Bruce's back, trying to be reassuring.   "If you feel safe around me, that's okay, because you are, right?"

Bruce laughs, and it's amazing how his laughter can sound so tired, and so sad sometimes.  "I am. And that makes me afraid of getting too comfortable, too careless.  You make it so easy to relax and.. and I just can't afford to slip up." 

"You won't."   Steve sits up, reaching with both hands to turn Bruce so that he can look him in the eyes, leaving the doctor straddling his lap.   "I don't really understand how it works, the way you and Tony get around the heart-rate problem when you're alone, but he told me that part of what you need for that _is_ to feel safe."   His arms wrap around Bruce's waist again, one forearm braced along his spine, fingers lightly resting just below the nape of his neck.   "If I can do that for you, I think I could really get to like that part, Doctor Banner."

"Mm."   Bruce lifts his own hands to rest them against the sides of Steve's neck, and if it were anyone else, if they were talking about anything else, they'd be shaking.  He's aware of the possibility that Steve has no idea what he's really talking about, that he has no idea why safety and security are so important in this context, or why that soft, protective note in his voice is liquefying Bruce's spine, but it doesn't matter.   He just leans in closer, and pays very close attention to any possible signs of Steve's discomfort.

They've been taking these last, dancing steps around each other for days, sharing brief brushes of casual contact in passing, or using clasped hands and lingering touches for emphasis. Now they're leaned close enough that they can each feel the warmth of the other's breath on their own lips, suspended in the moment because somehow, there's still no pressure; they're so far outside what they know to be the rules that there just aren't any, there's just what they want in each other.

Bruce takes that first-last leap forward, framing Steve's jawline in both hands as he leans down to kiss him, and lets it relax into a pace that seems natural to them both. It's expectedly slow, balanced between Steve's old-fashioned notions of sensuality and Bruce's underlying shyness, and it falls into a rhythm of soft, indulgent kisses and warm hands sliding over still-buttoned shirts.

It's intentionally chaste, Steve being inclined to take it slow, Bruce being too afraid of anything else, but the longer they continue the more obvious it becomes that it's just not enough.  Steve's fingers dip under the edges of Bruce's clothes to steal little touches of skin: just under his collar, the insides of his wrists, the tops of his ankles, and each one has the doctor breathing delicious little whimpers against his mouth.  

For Steve, it's not just the sensations that are new; it's the _desire_ , the sudden physical _need_ to touch and hold and taste, and for the moment all he cares about is showing this man _exactly_ how strong that desire is.  He doesn't think too much about it when Bruce shifts in his lap, drawing his knees apart and shoring up close, except to flatten his hands against the the small of Bruce's back and hold him tight against the single hard, upward roll of his hips.

It pulls a sharp hitch of breath into Bruce's lungs, because he can _feel_ how hard Steve is through the gabardine as his hips press against his backside, and then Steve's hands are coming around to slide over his stomach, and it's so _warm_ and oh he's been _aching_ for this and he wishes Tony could be _home_ and they could all just--

"S-Steve-- Steve, wait, no-- _stopstopstop_ \--"  

Steve's hands fly off of Bruce's body like he just put his fingers on a hot stove, and they snap to his sides and wrap around the edge of the chair 'til his knuckles drain white.  Bruce slumps forward against Steve's chest, burying his face in the side of his neck until he starts to tremble.

He starts to ask Bruce if he's okay, if he's hurt, what happened-- and then he can feel it against his own chest:  his heartbeat, pounding like an angry fist trying to break down a door. 

Oh, God. 

"I'm sorry-- I didn't-- I lost my grip for a minute, I'm sorry, Steve, I really thought I could--"  Bruce murmurs it against his throat, slowly drawing long sips of air into his lungs to gain his focus back.  He's a little pale and shaken, but not _green_ , and that's what matters.  

Steve just shakes his head, and wrenches his arms free of their lockdown to wrap close around Bruce's shoulders and just hold him, blindly dropping kisses in his hair.  "No, no-- it's fine, it's okay, I shouldn't have pushed you, I'm sorry--"

They slump against the back of Steve's chair, slowly getting their breath until Bruce stops shaking and Steve feels like his legs will work again.   

Only eight more days to go. 

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the lack of updates. Health issues, y'know I hate 'em. But hopefully this will make up for it, a little. orz

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bruce climbs out of Steve's lap when he feels like he can walk, and shuffles off toward the elevator.  His pulse is still in his ears, throbbing, washing in and out like a horrible tide.  He can hear Steve talking, asking him something, but he can't make it out right now, so he just murmurs an apology and gets back to his own floor.

It's not so hard to fight the change these days, most of the time. He hasn't had an uncontrolled incident since the Helicarrier, though he's had a couple of close calls with Tony.  Right now, though, he can feel the fatigue building as his heartbeat slows down and the adrenaline burns off.

It leaves him empty and exhausted, curled up at the bottom of himself, weighing down the nightmare trying to break through the floor.  And he hates it, hates himself, for losing that careful balance just because someone--  someone he cares for, who cares for him, whose unspoken wishes to protect him aren't useless sentiment-- put him in his lap. 

And touched him. And kissed him, and held him, no rituals, no bells, no whistles. Someone who knew the risks and wasn't afraid to take them, but trusted Bruce to keep himself in check.  It was _stupid_ and it was dangerous and he knows he never should have kissed Steve in the first place, but the worse part is knowing that Steve won't hold it against him even if he should, and the part that somehow manages to be worse than _that_ is hating Steve, just a little, for convincing him so completely that it would really be okay.

Bruce curls in on himself, safely nestled in his own bed, quiet and away from the rest of the world. It gnaws at him, not just the guilt for the slip but for the stupid thoughts that made it happen, wishing-- _wishing_ , like a stupid _child_ , a habit that he'd given up long before he ever made it into India-- for more.  

He got greedy, and Steve almost paid for it with his life. 

Bruce just closes his eyes and breathes in slow, measured draws. That's what happens when he wants too much; he's been down in it once before, and the memory of bitter, hot lead fills his mouth.

 

\--

 

Steve watches Bruce go.  He takes the stairs and makes sure Bruce gets to his floor in one piece, because it's clear that the doctor doesn't want help and the door locks shut behind him, but Steve can't ignore him.  So he waits, and then he heads to the privacy of his own bedroom to call Tony.

It rings a few more times than is comfortable, before the unfamiliar bleep of the phone being picked up announces itself.

_"Hey, soldier boy.  Everything okay?"_

"I'm honestly not sure.  Do you have time to talk?"

_"...Sounds serious. Give me a second to weasel out of this business thing and I'll find somewhere private-- Tim! I got a call, just-- yeah, put it down, don't touch that 'til I g--"_

There's the sound of an explosion, and a couple of happy whoops that go up from what sounds like a small crowd.

"...Tony? Where are you?"

_"Luxembourg. With an automotive club. They're fun, but they're kind of stupid--"_ His voice quiets as he takes his face away from the receiver, _"Didn't I just tell you to put that down? Jesus, it's like Dummy took a human form and became obsessed with ugly hats."_

In the background, someone barks, " _This was my grandfather's hat, you puffed-up piece of--_ "

_"Steve, gimme one second; Putting you on hold, don't hang up."_

The bleep happens again, and Steve is treated to Tony's idea of hold music: Motley Crue's _Smokin' In The Boys' Room_ , as arranged on some kind of MIDI composer, mangled to the point where even Steve, never having heard the song, knows it's a crap rendition.  But he waits through two loops of it, and then the bleep sounds again.

_"All right, I'm all yours. First question: is anybody hurt, lost, or sick?"_   Steve can hear the sound of Tony's footsteps on what he thinks must be gravel, or maybe rough sand. He'd ask, but there's more pressing matters at the moment.

"No, it... well, maybe.  Bruce and I... we were in the lab, and..."  Steve closes his eyes and forces himself to say it, because it's important.  "Well, we were necking, is what we were doing, and... well. Bruce got a little overwhelmed.  He went back to his room, I think to rest it off, but he was acting strange, like he couldn't hear me.  Is... is that normal, for him?"

_"For him, no, but it's not weird, either."_  Steve can hear Tony lean against what he thinks must be the side of his car.  " _Sometimes, having to stop suddenly is a little traumatic for him. You remember what I told you about subspace? It's partly conditioning, but he's pretty much always ready to go under, with enough time and prep; if he doesn't make it there before his heart-rate starts tripping him up, it can mess him up a little. It's not dangerous, it'll pass, it's just hard on him."_

"Oh."   Steve sinks a little into his desk chair.  That made sense.  

_"He's usually pretty good about knowing his limits, though.  Must've been a hell of a ride.  Tell me about it?"_

"He said he lost his grip, then he just sort of...jumped ship, I guess."  Steve sighs, and is thankfully not there to see Tony roll his eyes at his complete obliviousness to what a prime opportunity for phone sex he just trampled over. "Are you sure he's okay? I tried to go up and see him, but he wasn't answering me."

_"Honestly? No, he probably isn't, but he knows how to take care of himself, and what he probably needs is peace and quiet for awhile.  So give him some space; he'll come to you when he's ready; if you don't see him before then, make sure he gets something for dinner. And if he's not out and about by morning, call me."_

"All right."  Steve sighs heavily, buries his forehead in the palm of his hand.  "Do I need to let you get back to work?"

_"I'm all yours, remember?"_  He has that warm, affectionate tone in his voice; it's surprisingly easy to hear on the phone. Maybe it helps when you don't have to look at his face. _"Are you okay?"_

"I'm all right. I'm just worried about him, that's all.  I don't think I appreciated that part of his condition before," Steve admits, quietly, bowed against the side of the phone as if he might be able to close the distance between them that way.  He wonders when he started needing it.

_"There's a lot about his condition nobody appreciates,"_ Tony agrees.   _"But he gets it, and he's tougher than he looks, so don't sweat it too much.  Just be there for him when he wakes up."_

"I will."  Steve says it like it's accepting a misson, as if he'd ever really do anything else, when it came down to it.  "But I wish I understood some of this stuff better. I don't want to make him sick every time I touch him."

_"Steve, you didn't--"_

"Tony, there's more than one way to be sick. Trust it from a guy who got the 4F stamp four times: sickness is being deaf to everybody around you because the only thing you can think about is getting somewhere to be alone so nobody has to look at the condition you're in.  I know that isn't my fault, that doesn't mean I want it to keep happening."  

_"It takes time.  Be impressed that he was comfortable enough to try it with you; he wouldn't have, if he didn't think he could handle it. I'm telling you, he'll-- you know what?"_ Tony stands up off the car, or whatever it is he's leaning on.   _"I'll show you. I'll have JARVIS give you some of the security footage from our sessions, you'll get it."_

"Securi-- you _recorded_ it?"  He can feel his face turning red again. It's amazing how Tony can do that from across the Atlantic. At least he's not there to see it and gloat.  

_"That's not really that weird in this day and age, Cap, but in this case it really was for research."_  He paces a little; more gravel-sounding steps.   _"I needed to be able to pick out what worked and what didn't, so I taped it for later review."_

"And you're _sure_ he wouldn't mind if I saw it?" 

_"I asked him if I could show you, if I ever felt there was a need;  he told me yes."_

"Are you sure? I.. ah, I let it slip that I knew about his father, the other day.  He didn't seem too keen on that."

_"And people say I have no tact.  Tell me you didn't try to--"_

"Of course not, what kind of idiot do you take me for? Don't answer that.   No, we were talking about art, and I mentioned how I used to get my butt kicked once in awhile-- it spooked him, he could tell I knew why. That's all." 

_"...I see.  How often is 'once in awhile'?"_

"Getting beat up? Or just getting beat up in that one spot?"

_"I guess that answers my question. All right."_  Tony paces some more.   _"Thanks for telling me."_

Tony lapses into a contemplative silence, and Steve would really rather he not do that right now, so he interrupts. "What about you? You sound like you're having fun out there."

_"Oh, yeah!"_  Tony beams, instantly distracted; Steve can hear it in his voice, the issue of Bruce and beatings temporarily put aside.   _"I won't bore you with the details, but the short story is, they stole a bunch of Chitauri bits and pieces off the streets of Manhattan, got the Hell out of the country, and now they're doing all kinds of stupid things to it to see how it works.  It'd ridiculous, they have no idea what they're doing, but they've stumbled across some amazing stuff so far. I don't think they'll let me put them on the payroll, but we'll see."_

"Shouldn't SHIELD know about that?"

_"I called Fury already, they're monitoring remotely just in case.  But I don't want to talk about work. Yeah, I'm enjoying myself, but I've been ready to come home since before I left."_ He lowers his voice a little, letting the cool demeanor slip enough so that Steve can hear that faint edge of longing in his voice, telling him _I miss you_ without having to say it out loud _. "How've you and Bruce been, otherwise? What else did I miss?"_

"Not much, so far.  Though, I did put Bruce's naked ass on the internet."

\--

By the time they hang up, it's gotten dark, and Tony's homesick.  He'd never say so, of course, because that's being a little too honest, but Steve knows what homesickness sounds like when it's hidden under a layer of bravado.  He feels a little guilty, but he hopes it makes him come home sooner.

Steve, at least, has a direction to go in, and for the most part, that's all he really needs.  He braves the rainy two-block walk to the local market for groceries and returns home to cook dinner himself, figuring Bruce could use a break from last-minute takeout and leftovers.  He wishes he were better at it, but it's hard to screw up spaghetti.

He takes the elevator to Bruce's floor with a plate in one hand and another slew of apologies in the other, and finds himself a little surprised by the decor. It opens onto a spacious living room, but there's no furniture beyond a small soft-looking mat on the hardwood floor, a sort of cylindrical pillow, and an herb garden's worth of potted plants. 

When he knocks on the bedroom door, there's no answer, and it worries him. Bruce is a light sleeper, and he's more sensitive to the sounds of knuckles on wood than most.  When Steve tries it, he finds it unlocked, and he lets himself in quietly.

Bruce is asleep, still dressed and curled up on his foreign-looking bed, a pillow bunched under his face.  His face is relaxed, younger-looking, left even more striking against the premature grey of his hair, even with the glasses perched askew on top of his head.  Steve crouches down next to the bed and lightly runs his fingers through it. 

He stirs slightly, leaning just a bit into the touch.  "Mmn. Tony?"

Steve smiles, because he'll never get tired of being reminded of the simple reality of their affection for each other.  "Sorry, it's just me."

Bruce slowly opens his eyes, which doesn't help him much. It's dark and warm and his limbs feel like lead.  "Oh. Hey."

"Dinner's ready."  Steve lets his fingers stay where they are for the moment, curved around the back of Bruce's neck.  

"Oh. Thank you."  He looks up at Steve, tired and dry even just coming out of a sound sleep.  

They sit in silence for awhile, Bruce laying motionless under the warm weight of Steve's hand, until the doctor finally manages to sit up and start pulling his thoughts back in order.  

"...I shouldn't have done that, earlier. I'm sorry."  

"I'm not."

"You should be. I could have killed you."  His voice is so toneless, so empty, as if the words are struggling to fight their way out of quicksand. 

"But you _didn't_. And you stopped us before anything dangerous happened."  Steve slides his arm around Bruce's shoulders in a loose half-hug.  "You made a solid judgement call, Bruce, that's all.  I would rather you risk it and tell me when to back off than completely reject human contact out of fear. That would be true even if we weren't together."   

Saying it, actually saying the word 'together', has a palpable weight.  As if, up until a moment ago, both of them would have just assumed that each of them were with Tony, and perhaps united in purpose under the gentle dominance he exerted in his home, but not connected to one another beyond that; as though their not-really-a-tryst in the lab had been less an exploration of one another, and more mice playing while the cat's away.  

Bruce nods slowly and lets himself lean into the weight of Steve's arm, lets his eyes drift closed for a moment.  That feeling of safety settles into his limbs again, blissful and addictive and frighteningly tempting, and he breathes out in a low sigh.  "...It's harder when it's you or Tony."

"How so?"

"You're _Captain America and Iron Man_."  Bruce presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to ward off the headache he knows is coming.  "I know you'd say 'I'm not worth any more than anyone else, and neither is he', but you're wrong.  The world needs you, as defenders, as symbols. You're heroes and I don't know if you've noticed, but the world... the world was running pretty low on them, before all of you guys started showing up.  I can't make up for all the people I hurt, but at least most of them were soldiers, people who signed up to face down stuff-- well, maybe not like the Hulk, but danger, anyway.  If I--"

For just a moment, Steve frowns, deeply, angrily. It's a flash in the pan, and Bruce thankfully isn't looking at his face to pick it out, but he catches that first scent-sting of it as Steve reaches up and tugs him down to lie back on the bed.  It's not aggressive, it's not mean-spirited, it's not even really done in anger, it's just the quickest way Steve knows to get Bruce's complete attention.  "We signed up too, Bruce. Not with the army, or the Hulk, we signed up with _you,_ whether you're in control or not, no matter what happens. If this thing the three of us have going on is supposed to need honesty and trust, that means being honest about when you're slipping-- and sometimes you're going to slip, because everyone does-- and then trusting us to hear you, and catch you. Right?"

Bruce doesn't immediately answer, looking up at Steve's face dimly illuminated, the light from the city diffused by thin curtains.  But he nods, slowly, and is very pleased that the scent of Steve's anger immediately fades.

"Good."  He leans down over Bruce and kisses him.  It's gentle, and brief, but it's genuine, and somehow the slight wetness of Steve's lips soothes the doctor in a small-but-distinct way.  "C'mon.  Dinner's getting cold."

Bruce is distracted, but not for very long.

\--

They eat in relative silence, eaten up with their own thoughts and the general weight of their situation, but at least they don't eat alone, and it's faster washing the dishes with two people. The doctor's mind is elsewhere, but the far-away look in his eyes suggests he's looking outward more than inward, and when the kitchen is clean, Bruce bids Steve a quiet, half-mumbled goodnight and heads down into the lab instead of back to bed, so that's probably close enough to victory. 

Steve thinks of asking, of trying to understand what exactly is going on in Bruce's head or at least finding a way to soothe the worry gnawing at the back of his mind-- and then realizes he's being needlessly overprotective.  They're all fighters, if not soldiers, naturally they've all got pieces chipped off here and there, but Bruce isn't fragile or damaged.  Treating him like he is wouldn't be fair to anyone.

He decides to demonstrate that trust, retire to his own rooms, and mind his own business.  

Sort of.

"JARVIS?"

"How can I be of service, Captain Rogers?"

He meanders into his bedroom, disappears into his closet to change into his nightclothes.  Since Tony's been gone, he and Bruce keep to their own beds at night.  It's not as difficult as he expected it to be, after that handful of nights on the couch, but there's still a certain, subtle loneliness to it that appeals to Steve's somewhat under-used sense of poetry.   "Tony said he'd have you give me some security footage to review; has he, yet?"

"Yes, Captain. Shall I display them?"

"If you wouldn't mind."

The holographic projection blooms to life on the wall opposite Steve's bed, and he wonders if that's just the default setting, Tony being the kind of man who could probably appreciate watching television in bed, if he were inclined to watch it at all, or if Tony specifically arranged for JARVIS to put it there.  

It presented a video player and a menu, all listing videos labeled with names from the periodic table.  Tungsten, Antimony, Plutonium, Arsenic, Thalium, Ytterbium, Boron, Carbon, Neon, all arranged by date. The only exception is the first video, labeled  'Proposal', which has just enough connotation of commitment and devotion that it almost skips Steve's heart clean out of his ribcage.

"These are his selections from the security archive that Master Stark designated," JARVIS informs him politely.  "Shall I play them in order, Captain, or would you prefer to select them yourself?"

"Um.  N-no, I can do it.  Thank you, JARVIS. That'll be all."   

"You're most welcome, Captain."

And JARVIS then falls silent. 

For just a second, Steve hates Tony for this, because he knows what these videos are. Or at least he thinks he does.  For Tony, they're probably just research, because Tony doesn't really get emotionally invested the way other people do.  But for Steve, he's pretty sure he's about to watch the closest thing he'll ever get to pornography specifically tailored to his needs, and more than that, it's supposed to explain things.  He takes a deep breath, and selects the first video.

The camera opens on Bruce and Tony, in the lab, looking down on them from the security camera's mount in the ceiling.   Bruce looks nervous, holding a tablet and shifting uncomfortably as he approaches Tony's workbench.

Tony's got his soldering iron, working on one of the greaves from the suit. He's sweaty and filthy in the way he tends to be after he's been climbing around in machinery all day, and it's hard to argue that it's a damn fine look on him.  Most of the time he's all nice suits and slim black athletic gear, but there's something about the evidence of Tony being joyfully capable of physical labor that Steve can't help finding very attractive.

Bruce's voice comes slightly tinny through the sound system.  "...Tony? Do you have a minute?" 

"For you, I have all the time in the world."  Tony looks up, pokes his safety goggles up onto his forehead.  "What's up, Big Science?"

"...I have.. um."  He fidgets with his own glasses, as if watching Tony reminded him they were available to occupy his fingers.  "...I need your help."

"You're out of luck, I can't beat the last level of Space Invaders either."  Tony sets the soldering iron down, and bats Butterfingers away from trying to pick it up. "Ah-ah-ah, no, _no,_ that's not for you. Go find Dummy and make sure he's not stuck somewhere."

Bruce chuckles a little as the robot wanders off in search of its loopy little brother, and then he slides his tablet across the table to Tony.  "It's not that."

That gets Tony's attention, because he seems to have been expecting some form of witty retort from Bruce's corner, and when he doesn't get it, he immediately assumes something's wrong. It's amazing how unguarded his face is.  "Then, what is it? Y'okay?"

"I'm fine, I just-- I can't say it.  The.. ah, project outline, is ... it's all there, just let me know what you think."

Tony takes it, frowning.   Steve gets that. Bruce is never shy about projects.  He reads it, and his eyes get wider and wider until his eyebrows are about to be absorbed into his hairline.  "...I can't believe you never told me you can't have sex."

Bruce rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands.  Tony, you jackass. "Did you read anything past that part?" 

"I read the whole thing, that just stuck out as the weirdest part."  Tony slides the tablet back. "You really think having me dominate you is going to help your condition?"

Bruce nods. "It-- it's okay to say no, I understand, and I don't want this to--"

"Whoa, hey, no, I'm not turning you down, I'm just surprised."  Tony turns to face him.  "Have you done anything like that before?"

"No, but I've been doing a lot of reading about altered states of consciousness lately."  Bruce seems to relax a little.  "Most of what I read talks about using chemical substances, which I can't really do, or things like sensory deprivation, which is really not safe for the Other Guy's sake.  Subspace is more controlled, and... um. Well.  You're the most sexually experienced person I know, and I really need someone I can trust, so...I thought, if... if you didn't mind..."

If Bruce's discomfort affects him at all, Tony doesn't show it. "I'm glad my reputation precedes me, but I've never quite gotten that deep into the whole BDSM thing. I mean, sure, blindfolds, handcuffs, even candle wax a couple of times, but this is a little beyond the range of my expertise just yet. I'll need to do some research."   

Bruce smiles, just slightly, and to Steve, that reaction marks the date of the video's recording better than the timestamp.  It's not the smile that he knows now; the one on the screen is smaller, more hesitant, the wounds in it fresher, dry blood flaking at the corners.  This is a Bruce and a Tony who haven't fallen for each other yet, but he knows they will, and that thought goes straight between his legs.

"So you'll think about it?" Bruce asks, that bruised hope clear and present in his voice.

"I already thought about it. Yeah, I'll do it."   This is also a Tony who doesn't appreciate his dominant tendencies yet, because he's not guarding that protective, reassuring smile at all. "It's sex, science, and you: those are just about my three favorite things. If you could work a really good cognac in there somehow, I'd make it a sport just so I could do it professionally."

Bruce chuckles lightly, and the security feed ends.

Steve can't cue the next video fast enough.

 

\---

Bruce works methodically, chasing down ideas, pinning them to cards like butterflies. The displays on the running monitors he uses to track his heart rate make no sense.  That graph shouldn't spike that high without an Incident.

His mind keeps going back to sitting in Steve's lap, feeling his hands all over again. It makes him think of Tony, of Steve and Tony, of the couch and old movies.   That weary, gray time of doubt and loathing has mostly passed, far sooner than usual, which is either a triumph for his self-esteem, or something else.  He's beginning to think the latter.

He supposes it could be psychological. Steve is Captain America, epitome of human perfection.  He'd studied the changes that Operation: Rebirth had made in Steve once he had access to SHIELD's records, desperately seeking something relevant to his own condition, and the effects were, as he'd said, unreal.  It didn't just make him a contender for every Olympic team on Earth, it made him a speed-reader and, Bruce suspects, a tetrachromat, with perfect depth perception, flawless hand-eye coordination, and an eidetic memory, and the kind of charisma that leads good men to good deaths. And those are just the ones Bruce knows about.  

But Bruce isn't the kind of man who lets himself get drawn into things.  Tony had to woo him for months before the barriers really started to come down, and Tony had offered him everything he'd been chasing the past few years with no strings attached.  Steve managed to cut through all of Bruce's failsafes with soft, exploring kisses-- good ones, but not that good--  and firm hands on the small of his back.   Wishing for Tony to come home and fuck them both into a shared, blissed-out haze shouldn't have been enough to shake his resolve, unless there was something else to it.

So he calls Tony, because before he and Tony were lovers-- and what an unfair word that is, because they haven't exchanged proper I-love-yous and maybe never would-- they were colleagues.

The phone rings, and Tony picks up.   _"You've reached Sexy Geniuses Anonymous, please introduce yourself to the group."_

"It's not Anonymous if I have to introduce myself."

_"The first step is admitting you have a problem, caller."_

"Fine. I'm Bruce Banner, and I'm addicted to Tony Stark."

_"Just so you know? I'm going to be touching myself for the remainder of this phone call over that intro.  Don't be alarmed."_   Bruce can hear Tony's smile on the other end of the line.   _"It's good to hear your voice. What are you doing up? I heard you had to bail on makeouts."_

"Steve called you? I guess I'm not surprised, it must have upset him."  Bruce sighs, because of course Steve would worry.  "But at least that saves the trouble of having to explain."

_"Good, because I've been dying to know how necking got your green all in a fluff."_  There's the sound of a bed creaking as Tony sits up.   _"Scale of 'one' to 'better than me', how was it?"_

"What number accurately describes 'Good enough that I was fantasizing about having you with us at the time'?"  Bruce takes a few, measured breaths, which is more to let Tony know he's being completely serious than to actually check himself.  "I let my head get away from me. I wanted it too much and he made me feel like that was okay and I have no idea how he did it. It's been bothering me all night, so I went and checked my cardio logs.  Tony, I went six beats-per-minute over critical."

_"And you didn't--?"_

"No. I got close, but I had it under control, even after that point.  I'll send you the readouts if you want, but you and I have never exceeded the critical rate.  And I've been thinking-- what if it's not that I feel safe around Steve, but that I feel stable around him?"

Tony hums a little, thinking.   _"...It would make a certain amount of sense.  You're radiant, maybe he is too."_

"The word you're looking for is 'radioactive'."

_"No, it's not."_  

Bruce rolls his eyes. Yes, it's one of Tony's exceedingly rare sweet nothings, but the cost in scientic inaccuracy is far too high.  "I don't know, I'll need to test him for it." 

_"Gonna take blood samples?"_

"Maybe."   Bruce checks his watch.  "He should still be up, maybe he won't mind a few questions..."

_"He'll be happy just to hear you sounding like yourself again.  Take me with you?"_

"You're sure? It's-- actually, _is_ it late for you? I just realized I have no idea where you are right now."  Bruce surprises himself with how much he dislikes the notion of not knowing where on the planet Tony is, if only because he knows how to get very, very lost, and his mental connection with it is a sad, bitter one.  

_"Luxembourg. I'm at the hotel; Pepper's minding the weirdoes for me, I needed a break. I'd forgotten how much I hate sharing lab space with people who aren't you."_  Tony chuckles. _"It's fine. I just want to hear both of you in the same room, that's all."_

There's something lonesome in the way he says it, and it's a tone Bruce has heard before, usually when Tony's been at the bottom of a bottle of Jack Daniels and thinking of some dismal yesteryear.   But Bruce smiles, and makes sure his footsteps are audible on the stairs.  "We've spent most of our time together, the past few days. He has a table in the lab now; if you want to bring him home something, you might consider an easel." 

 

\--

 

Steve has gone through the first three videos and found them uncomfortable.  The first one ends in only a few minutes, Tony shoving Bruce's clenched, finely-trembling body onto the bed a bit too hard, only for Bruce to stammer out the safeword before he curls in on himself, shaking and afraid.  He watches Tony immediately drop the cold, businesslike attitude, gather Bruce up into his arms and reassure him with quiet murmurs that Steve is sure are apologies and pleas for forgiveness.

If he thinks back to it he can remember that two or three weeks, where Tony was avoiding work in the lab and looking underslept, his weird aversion to being handed things suddenly extending to even having things set in front of him.  He feels bad for not noticing.

The second video is violent.  Bruce whispers a need for castigation; he can't hear it, but Steve can read his lips.  He begs to be punished; Tony asks what he did wrong.  Bruce tells him he's a killer and no one's ever taken him to task for it, and lacking the heart to tell him that he's right, that he's responsible for the deaths of an unknowable number of people, Tony just slaps him like an unruly child;  the video goes on for another few minutes, but Steve sees both of them shatter in that single moment, and he can't watch it anymore.

The third one introduces the bar: it's short, and gunmetal-grey, with a textured grip.  Tony seems to find his groove, a little shaky but confident; Steve thinks it must have been the same way when he learned to fly.  He stops trying to live up to some imagined leather-daddy ideal and does it his own way, slowly taking Bruce's control away to prove he can be trusted to hold onto it.  Bruce calls the safeword, not because it's too much or because he's afraid or hurt, but because this tactic is new and unfamiliar and he doesn't feel safe continuing until they've talked.  The video ends there.

The fourth one, Arsenic, has Tony forcing Bruce onto his knees, putting the bar into his hands, covering his eyes with a long strip of black silk. They're more confident now, suggesting this one is taking place after a few long conversations, more relaxed.  When Tony bends at the waist to kiss him-- slow, posessive, assertive rolls of his jaw and wet slide of his tongue-- and Bruce goes down easily on his back, his own mouth opening, trust and obedience clear in the way his shoulders slacken against Tony's comforter-- the comforter that Steve had sat on once, quietly confessing how much it hurt to think their love might not be real-- it's like watching two gears click into place.  They grind like it, too.  

Steve watches Tony undress Bruce slowly, taking the time to own every expanse of skin as he exposes it, and when he's as bare as he can be-- because, just like Tony said, he can't get Bruce's button-down off with the bar in his hands-- he leans down over Bruce and kisses his mouth once, asks if it's too much, if he's okay.  And when Bruce murmurs, softly, pleading, trusting, _Yes, I'm okay, please don't stop, Anthony,_ Steve is sure he can pin down the exact second that Tony Stark fell in love. 

He slides his hand into his pants when Tony strips himself out of his clothing, movements exaggerated so that Bruce can clearly hear each button undone, the slide of leather against worn denim, before he leans down and begins a slow dance of grinding hips and feather-light slides of fingertips over Bruce's skin.  It's an arduous process, slowly teasing and prepping Bruce until he's biting back whimpers so he won't miss any of the damnably inaudible things Tony is whispering salaciously against his ear.  

When Bruce stops holding back, and his voice is coming in low moans on every exhaled breath, his shoulders and hips slack in Tony's hands,  the look on Tony's face is nothing but triumph.  He climbs on top of Bruce, seals against him at every possible point, covering him like a salve on a wound, and fucks him in slow, deep strokes that Steve mimics with his own hand wrapped around his straining cock.  The Tony on the screen rocks his hips as if every stupid fling he's ever had was only practice for this, the muscles of his back and his thighs and his ass bunching and shifting with every movement, drawing those mindlessly pleasured noises out of Bruce's slackened, open, trusting body.  It's like watching him play an instrument, fingers twined in Bruce's hair, gasping for breath and praising the heat of the doctor's body, the tightness of it, how he wants to see him come--

The video pauses, leaving Steve with his hand still working over himself, slick with pre-come and steel hard against his palm.

He almost jumps clean out of his skin when JARVIS informs him, nonchalantly,  "Excuse me, Captain; Doctor Banner is en route to your apartments; he is on the elevator. Shall I close the video?"

"I-- Y-yes. Yes, you should. Thank you, JARVIS," he stammers, and pretends he's not at all creeped out.

"You're welcome, Captain."

The video disappears, and Steve stands up, tucks himself back into his pants and makes his way to the bathroom to wash his hands, and there's no way in Hell he's going to be able to hide this before--

There's a knock at the door.  

He winces, and then steels himself to answer it.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

Bruce knocks, holding the phone just slightly away from his ear. He's never had any reason to come to Steve's floor before, mainly because the man has never actually been in there at the same time Bruce has ever been awake, as far as he knows.  

He waits not very long, phone cradled between shoulder and ear as he fusses with his shirtsleeves, trying to find a way to phrase the questions he needs answered.  Steve will cooperate, he knows that, but his knowledge of modern technology is limited, and Bruce's knowledge of secret government technology of World War II is, in a word, lacking.  Tony's voice is prattling in his ear about something or other, but he's too distracted to mind it much.

When the door opens, there's a pink faced Steve in his pajamas-- clingy white undershirt, loose blue flannel sleep pants-- and Bruce is hit with a lungful of sex.  

The sensation itself isn't new; almost all the Avengers have given off their version of that scent before. Clint's is strangely weightless, sharp and clean and cool.  Natasha's is much more rare, but it's a thick, heady, deeper-than-you're-willing-to-go scent. Thor always has a graceful touch of it in his natural electric musk.  Tony's is capricious, a constant heat that spikes like flashes of inspiration.

Steve's, however, is new to Bruce; the scent that pours from the doorway is smooth and rich and deep enough to drown in it.  Bruce breathes in slowly and tries not to savor it too much.  "...Catch you at a bad time?"

He blushes. He blushes because that's what he does at times like these, but he meets Bruce's eyes effortlessly anyway; it's a little embarrassing just because of the situation, but really, he has nothing to hide.  "Depends on how you look at it."

It's not an answer Bruce was expecting. "I--I see."

"It's fine; you look like you're feelin--  That's Tony on the phone, isn't it."   It's not really a question. Steve glowers at the cell phone pressed up against Bruce's ear.  "Let me talk to him."

Bruce hands it over, slightly surprised.

"I really hope for your sake this wasn't intentional."  The statement isn't cold or angry, but it's firm, definitely with a shade of the Captain America Voice.  Accepting Tony's dominance at home is fine; being manipulated, not so much.

" _Was what intentional? Bruce called_ me _, Spangles_."

Tony might be a conniving genius, but he's a terrible liar, and he would never be able to feign that kind of ignorance.  Steve smiles, and everything is fine again.  "I was watching something, that's all. Excuse me."  He hands the phone (now spouting Tony's laughter) back to Bruce.  "You look like you're feeling better."

Bruce makes a point of roving his eyes up and down Steve's body, more in bewilderment than anything cool enough to be seduction.  "Yeah, you too.  Um, what were you watching...? Or do I not want to know?"

" _Our security tapes_ ," replies Tony over the phone. " _I thought it'd help him understand all that stuff he says he doesn't get_."

Steve braces himself, and is fully prepared to accept Bruce's entirely justified anger, for invading his privacy, for being a creep about it. But it doesn't come;  Bruce looks up at him with a vulnerable, downright apologetic sadness in those big brown eyes.  "...What did you think?"

He's thinking of the slap, and probably whatever came afterward that Steve pointedly couldn't watch; the tears and the shaking, the things that probably look pathetic and broken and sick to a third party.

And Steve gets it, because he saw that, and what came afterward; the love and affection and the obvious bond between them, too. He smiles, and reaches for Bruce's shoulder again. How many times does this make? It's not fair to keep doing this to him, knocking him down to face the ugliest parts of himself and then hauling him back to his feet by the scruff of his neck.  

But just one more time should be okay, he thinks, so he lets his fingers curl against Bruce's nape.  "...I think that you're both incredibly brave for even trying it, and that I'm sorry that it wasn't something I could have helped you with at the time," he admits. "I think you're even better when you're doing what works best for you, and not what's supposed to work on paper.  I think what I see in you gets better every time I see it, and I think all that is pretty keen.  And, um."  He turns a slightly darker pink, though he doesn't avert his eyes. "...really easy on the eyes, if it's all right to say so."

Bruce seems to accept this, grateful and relieved in an understated way, as if he'd expected Steve to be reluctantly tolerant but stern in his disapproval, or worse.  But really, the rich scent of his arousal and the gentleness of his words would have convinced anyone; even Tony's gone silent on the other end of the line.

Steve smiles, pleased with this non-response.   "Do you want to come in?"

Before Bruce can get enough air in his lungs to answer, Tony's voice drifts in from the open bedroom door, slightly tinny with the video call's clarity.  He seems to have hung up on Bruce. " _We had some questions for you, regarding this afternoon_ ," he answers.  " _But I'm starting to think those can wait._ "

Hearing this, and being rather surprised because he's never actually seen a video call before, Steve 'follows' Tony into the bedroom, trailing a somewhat punch-drunk-looking doctor behind him.  

The projection shows Tony in a smooth, wine-red dress shirt and black slacks, necktie still under his collar but undone. He seems to be sitting at a tea table in a small but lavish hotel room, a large, empty bed taking up most of the view behind him. His sleeves are rolled up and his hair is mussed like he's been working, and it paints a very nice balance between the hard-working machinist and the unfathomably wealthy socialite.   

Once Steve and Bruce are both in the room where he can see them, he leans back in his very plush-looking chair, and is very pleased with himself.   

"Questions, huh?" Steve asks, and takes a seat on his bed. "Nice to see your face again, Sheik." 

" _When did I graduate from 'Stark' to 'Sheik'?_ "

"If you could see yourself right now, you wouldn't argue." 

" _Fair enough_."  

Bruce finally seems to get his feet under him and come back to his surroundings, and he smiles at the screen;  he doesn't have to say anything, and the sweet, almost boyish smile that Tony gives him is more than enough to express the right sentiments. _I miss you. It's good to see you. I wish we were all home_.

Tony reaches just off-camera for a plate of cheese and fruit and a piece of stemware full of something pale and sparkling, which he sips briefly before clearing his throat.  " _So, it seems Bruce exceeded the critical heartrate today, without a Hulkout or subspace_ ," he mentions casually, as if it's no big deal.  " _Which is impressive, since I hear you didn't even get past first base_."

"I thought that's what you were shooting for," Steve says, pointedly ignoring the baseball metaphor, even if he flushes slightly darker with it, "with the.. um. Bedroom science. But that's a really good sign, right? It means it's working."

" _Bedroom science! Why didn't we ever think of calling it that?_ "

"Tony."

" _Right, sorry, I forgot I'm supposed to be wearing my serious face_." Tony clears his throat. " _Yes, it's a good sign, but it means we don't know what the new threshold is.  And we can't have that, can we, Bruce?_ "  Tony looks at his lab partner with a sly grin.  " _It's important to know where the limits are_." 

"You're being facetious, and I don't like it."  Bruce looks between the two of them, rather stricken by the trap he's found himself in.  On the wall, an observant Tony, all decadence and authority; on the bed, a strong, steady Steve, still reeking of sex. And they're already sharing conspiratorial looks at each other.  He's doomed, but Bruce forces himself to argue.  "If the threat ceiling really has been raised, that's fine. That's good, that's progress. But if we don't know what the limits are, then we shouldn't do anything until we know what it is, and that means tests, and monitoring, and--"

" _Or_ ," Tony interrupts.  " _You can take it slow, and only call a safeword if you feel the change coming on, and not just when you feel like you're getting close to the old limit. It doesn't have to be right now, I'm just saying, this is part of the process, and we knew this was a possibility."_  

Oh, like _Hell_ it doesn't have to be right now; their bodies are all screaming to the contrary. Bruce rakes his fingers through his hair, frustrated. "This isn't funny, Tony. You've seen what the Hulk can do, what he's already done, I can't just--"

Tony leans slightly forward in the chair, sets his glass down, and makes a point of looking directly into the camera as an approximation of eye-contact. " _It's working, Bruce. Why won't you let it?"_  

Steve reaches for Bruce's hand in a gentle but firm grip.. "I... really liked the time we spent in the lab today," he says, the chaste neutrality of the words making it somehow more intimate. "Did you?"

Bruce hesitates, but he nods, the frown on his face relaxing into something like an apologetic pout. He could argue with Tony. He could argue with Steve.  Not with both.   "... I fell apart because I wanted it too much," he confesses, his voice quiet.  

Steve lightly squeezes his hand, frowning in a mild concern.  "How do you mean, 'too much'? Did you think I wouldn't--?" 

"No, it's... it's just the wanting. I got too excited, I got greedy, and I slipped. It felt like I could have been okay. I've been trying to understand it all night, and I can't figure it out. You make me feel less volatile. I'm almost sure there's more to it than just attraction-- it's solid, it can be observed in the data-- but I haven't figured that out yet and it's so hard to ignore at times like this." Bruce explains.  "Like I said, it makes it easy to get too comfortable, and that's dangerous."

"But you have more room for that now, right? If you went over critical once already."  Steve smiles, and it's too comforting for words.  "We talked about this. It's okay to be comfortable; we're with you.  Right, Tony?" 

" _Right. Listen to him, Bruce, he knows what's what. If you want it, give it another try. I'll be watching, and not just because I want to see it_." Tony agrees.  " _JARVIS can monitor your heart rate and gamma output from here, you don't have to worry about anything. If I see anything go wrong-- and you will have my full attention, I promise-- I'll call it, and both of us will talk you down; until then, just go easy.  You can do that for us, right, Steve?_ "

Steve smiles at both of them, lets his thumb run gently over Bruce's knuckles.  "I think I can manage. But only if that's what you want, Doctor Banner."

"...You make that sound like a pet name," Bruce murmurs, watching the brush of Steve's long fingers around his own hand.  Even just that slight touch makes it so much easier to set aside the caution he clings to, to remind himself that Tony can be trusted to mind it.  

" _I'm pretty sure he can make anything sound like a pet name_ ," Tony agrees.  " _There are days when 'Tony, give it a rest' sounds kind of endearing_."

"You may have a point."  Bruce tosses a look over his shoulder at Tony, and asks, "...You're sure you're okay with this, not being here in person? We... didn't talk about this like we probably should have."

It's a loaded statement.  Jealousy is a pitfall in any relationship, but this is different. Tony is very used to having to be the best, and having to fight an uphill battle against Steve's memory for most of his childhood has left him with fears that linger like burn scars, and they all know it.   Bruce waits patiently; Steve watches Tony's face in the projection, prepared for any answer he might give and abide by it even if he can tell by his expression that he's lying.

That seems to slow Tony down a little, and he takes another sip of his drink, probably stalling for time to consider.  After a moment, he answers, " _...I'm sure_." 

Steve nods, and holds his arm out for Bruce;  the doctor sits down next to him, and slowly, they work back to where they left off, this time under Tony's eyes.  

\--

 

Tony eases back in his chair, knees parted, wineglass cradled in his fingers but mostly forgotten. The cardiac and gamma monitors are steady in their expected ranges, and there's nothing to interrupt or complicate things. Finally.

He's been fearing what would become of the two of them in his absence, how he would eventually have to reconcile it with his own insecurities.  Now he's not sure why he even worried about it in the first place; this is like watching a wet dream in real life.  They draw each other in at their own pace, languid and slow-- new enough to each other to fool around like teenagers, old enough to know better than to waste it on frantic, mindless groping.

Steve eases back against the headboard, letting Bruce stretch out on top of him, hands wandering everywhere over fabric and skin. They murmur quietly to each other, too, occasionally smiling or laughing between brushes of lips and tongue, and somehow, those little touches of affection are more comforting and more erotic to Tony's eyes than anything else he might have wanted to see.

" _You make it look like performance art_ ," Tony muses, and takes a sip of his wine to wet his mouth.  He smiles and makes a point of not specifically directing his question at either of them:  " _How's it feel_?" 

Steve chuckles, draws his mouth away from Bruce's long enough to focus on the side of the doctor's neck between his answers.  "Warm," he breathes, and-- perhaps bolder than Tony would have expected of him-- lets his hands settle on Bruce's hips to grind against him in a way that makes him screw his eyes shut and gasp at the sensation.  "And hard--"

Bruce whimpers in his lap, burying his face in Steve's hair, but his hands stray to the wall for balance as he urges his hips down to meet the upward arching of the super-soldier underneath him.  He can't quite form any words, but the sound he makes is either agreement or approval; Tony can't decide which he likes better.

When Steve reaches for Bruce's buttons to get his shirt off, Tony allows himself to undo his belt. The sound of the buckle clattering to the floor is clearly audible over the call, and it makes the two on the bed chuckle lightly.

"Guess that means you like what you see," Steve muses; the button-down tangles around Bruce's forearms the way it does when he's holding the bar, and the effect is almost instant: Bruce's shoulders fall back, his chest jutting out, and his breath pulls deep into his stomach.  Steve doesn't overthink it, just pulls him close so he can have Bruce's throat to himself. 

Tony's palm runs slowly along the length of his cock, still firmly covered in his slacks. " _Every time_ ," he breathes.  " _Bruce? You all right_?"

He can't answer, but Bruce nods, his eyes drifting half-shut.  

Steve watches from below him, fingers sliding through the soft expanse of his chest hair, over the smooth, rounded planes of natural muscle.   "...I love this part," he decides.

"Which part?"

"This," he breathes. His palms slip up Bruce's sides and over his back, to his shoulders and down to his waist again. Steve isn't impressed by his own body; it's the product of Erskine's genius and although he loves being what he is, he didn't earn it.   Not Bruce, though;  this body is hand-forged by hard times and survival instinct. He knows every plane of this body without ever having touched it, knows the shape of each muscle, rendered it in digital ink, and now he has the softness of skin and hair to add to it.  Steve's hips arch up again, and Bruce answers the movement almost thoughtlessly. It makes his breath catch when he speaks. "It's-- it's _him_ , y'know?"

" _Yeah.  Yeah, I do_."  Tony laughs, a little breathlessly, because he knows, better than Steve will be able to grasp for a long time.  He feels like he's conquered something when he realizes he looks forward to being able to commisserate on it.   " _He's getting close-- can you tell_?"

"Close? But we're not--"

" _Not like that.  He's starting to space_ ," Tony explains.  He stops his hand between his legs and forces himself to focus; everything's still in the safe range, but this is important.  " _In record time, too_."

Steve sits up a little, trying to get a good look at Bruce's face, and is surprised when he sees that Tony's right:  his eyes are swimming under a fringe of dark lashes, lips slightly parted. His body moves in thoughtless little shifts against Steve's, seeking friction and attention between those slow, heart-calming deep breaths.

Bruce swallows once, and a little bit of focus comes back to his eyes as he meets Steve's.  "It's okay, I don't have to-- I can stay with it--"

" _Don't fight it, Bruce_."  It's the closest thing Tony's given to a direct order yet, and Bruce relaxes with it.  " _You're in good hands_." 

As if to prove it, Steve finishes undressing Bruce, and the doctor is almost gone before he's done. He's seen it on the tapes, the openness, the complete surrender to the feeling written on Bruce's features, but this is different.  This is live and real, a warm, welcoming body arching against Steve's own, and accompanied by the unmistakable sound of Tony's hand slowly stroking himself through his clothes.

Tony's voice all but purrs behind them, a rich, dark tone that Steve's only ever heard once before and makes him feel like someone's lit a fire in his stomach. _"If he tells you what he needs, you think you can give it to him, Cap?"_

Steve can't help a soft chuckle against the spot on Bruce's neck he's trying not to mark.  "Whatever he wants," he agrees.

Bruce answers by wrapping his legs around Steve's waist, grinding upward against him as he tightens his grip in the sheets. The good captain almost loses it just at the sweetly desperate expression on his completely unguarded face.

Tony talks him through the preparation like he's giving away trade secrets, how to coax Bruce's body open slowly enough to have him begging wordlessly for more, how to brace the small of his back to keep him from shifting too much, which sounds to listen for--   _yeah, there it is, a little deeper now_ \-- to understand him while he can't talk.   Steve drinks it all in like gospel, arranging himself and Bruce on the bed to give Tony as clear a view as possible.

Steve grips the headboard and slides his cock into the tight heat of Bruce's body like he's sinking into a hot bath, aching and needing and going as slowly as Tony tells him.  The salt of Bruce's sweat is on his lips and the heat of Tony's voice is in his ears, and before long he's driving his hips against the doctor in strong, hard thrusts, unconsciously timing them to the helpless moans and gasps below and behind him.

Bruce comes without preamble, he just snaps his hands around Steve's forearms so hard there'll be bruises, however briefly, and arches up so hard it lifts him nearly off the bed;  Steve lasts long enough to think he should slow down, but Tony's strained, breathless ' _Oh God don't stop_ ' behind him does him in.  

 

\--

 

"He's shaking-- no, shivering. Is he--?"  

" _It's part of the drop; just keep him warm, hold onto him; it's okay if he just falls asleep, that happens sometimes._ "   

Steve wraps Bruce up in the comforter and keeps him close, half-curled up on his chest, and that seems to do the trick.  He calms down, and his breathing evens out into a comfortable, resting depth.  He might as well be napping on the couch.    "...That was intense," Steve finally manages. His sweat is still keeping his hair stuck to his forehead. 

Tony laughs. He's laid out in his hotel bed, pleased with himself like a cat that's gotten into the cream.  " _What'd you think? Good?_ "

"Yeah.  You still okay?"

" _Yeah. You're amazing, both of you. I'll go over the data tomorrow, but I don't think Bruce has anything to worry about."_

"I'll let him know."   Steve smiles, drowsy and lightly petting Bruce's hair.  Super-soldier or no, there's only one thing his body wants to do after something like that; he can already feel his eyelids getting heavy.  "Tony.  You're coming home soon, right?"

Tony rewards him with what may be the warmest, most honest smile he's ever seen.  " _Soon.  Get some sleep, Steve._ " 

Steve doesn't know how to hang up the voice-call, so he doesn't; Tony doesn't mind leaving it open if it means getting a chance to see the two of them falling asleep together while he drifts off himself. 


	5. Chapter 5

 

 

Tony wakes up the next morning, some time after his phone has finally died. It's not quite midmorning and his bed is too cold, so he forces himself awake and into the shower and on to work proper.

If he's honest with himself, he knows he needed Bruce and Steve to work that out between them as much as they probably needed it themselves. He needed to know it could work, that he could be part of what they had together without interrupting and making it about himself, and now he knows. He's sure. A part of him wants to be jealous and hurt over it; the greater part of him knows better. He thinks back to that first time they'd fallen asleep on the couch together, the way Bruce's hand rested over Steve's, how perfect that had made it all seem, and that feeling of petty envy dissolves like sugar in hot coffee.

He can't be with them right now; that's just an unfortunate fact. What matters is that they can be there for each other without him, and as long as they're together, they aren't alone. For the time being, the best he can do is watch over them from a distance, and that's exactly what he plans to do.

When he goes over the actual numbers from JARVIS' monitoring, it's a little baffling: Bruce wasn't being overly sentimental when he said he felt less volatile. The numbers said he was more stable, and the results proved it: he rose into a conditioned state with only the barest minimum of cues, dropped out of it like a ton of bricks, and then went straight to sleep, all without being outside the established norms for Bruce's heart rate and blood pressure. Obviously that had _something_ to do with Steve, and the experimentation phase of this project is going to be _beyond awesome_ , but it does raise a couple of particular concerns about gamma radiation and tissue stress.

He makes a few notes, and then sends them off to Bruce's email. Tony wants to bail on this stupid trip twice as bad now, because science with Bruce is way more fun than science with exiled Manhattan looters in dumb hats and weird dinosaur-scientists, and sexy bedroom science with him _and_ Steve can only be better. But the sooner he finishes here, the sooner he can get home, and never have to worry about it again.

Pepper catches him in the hotel restaurant on his way to fetch himself some breakfast. She's got a sharp look on her face, the one the board of directors will kill to see before Black Friday; that smile is usually worth six figures.

"Morning, Pep, you're looking lucrative this morning." He pulls out her chair because it's the gentlemanly thing to do.

"Good morning, Tony. You look... rested." She looks a little surprised; very rarely does Tony actually look properly rested, even when he's been getting more than four or five hours of sleep a night, which is rare in and of itself. But maybe that's just her way of being too polite to say that he looks like he got seven kinds of laid.

"Thank you." He smiles, and counts himself having done a bit of growing up when he doesn't gloat about tele-directing superporn. That's how you stay classy. "What else are we doing in Luxembourg? I'm starting to get antsy."

"As of eight this morning, absolutely nothing." Pepper's million-dollar smile widens just a touch, because she can't help being pleased with herself when she lands a good deal. "Congratulations, Mr. Stark, you officially own a brand-new automotive club; I cut them a check to pay for their construction equipment so they can build their own lab, and you'll be receiving monthly reports through the Stark Solutions Research Facility, Luxembourg office."

"Nice. Does that mean I get to go home?" Tony looks hopeful.

Pepper disappoints him. "You have one more stop to make. Really, Tony, this is only a once-a-year trip, you only have to keep it in your pants for a little while longer, I promise."

"You're saying that like you don't _also_ have a guy waiting at home for you. Imagine that feeling, only twice over, and then raised to the power of _seriously it's Bruce and Steve you do not get to judge me_." Tony puts on a spectacular pout that absolutely does not help him convince Pepper, and he is forced to sigh, roll his eyes, and admit defeat. "All right, fine, I'll behave. Where are we going?"

"Not _we_. You. I have to get back to my own desk if we're going to put a branch out here before end of quarter," she explains. "Which we'll need to do, if you want them to work under your umbrella. But you won't need me for this next one, anyway."

"I don't believe this, you're picking on me about wanting to get home, and _you're_ bailing."

"I'm bailing because I have work to do and I can't do it on the road. And you'll like this one, he's a scientist."

"What kind of scientist? We really need to have rules about this kind of thing: no dinosaurs, no cloning, no non-DeLorean time travel, and nothing that makes anything lay eggs if it does not normally lay eggs."

"The paperwork says he's an astrophysicist, and a huge Iron Man fan." Pepper slides him her tablet again.

The profile shows a handsomely severe-faced, older gentleman with long black hair and the world's most immaculate fu-manchu framing a subtle, but confident smile. The list of his accomplishments runs about a mile long; masters' degrees in four or five scientific disciplines, tons of achievement awards, philanthropic contributions to charities in the Middle East, controlling interest in a small army's worth of lucrative distributors across all of Asia.

"Sexy," Tony comments offhandedly.

"I didn't think you were into older men."

"I meant more the part where he's a genius billionaire. I know a guy like that, he's very attractive. All right; where am I meeting this... am I saying it right? 'Zhang Tong'?"

"Ulan Bator. Have you ever been to Mongolia?"

 

  
\--

 

  
Tony has not, in fact, ever been to Mongolia, but once he makes it into Ulanbaatar, he decides it's the kind of place he could fall in love with: jam-packed full of people, desert-dry, full of alleyways and sidestreets begging to be wandered down, and only endless skies overhead.

Best of all, nobody here knows his face. Not that he minds his fame-- far from it, attention is practically a staple food for him-- but this is new and special and interesting, something he hasn't made a mark on yet. It almost makes him wish he'd left the sedan at the airport, a city like this deserves to be traversed on foot.

He entertains vague fantasies of bringing Bruce and Steve for a vacation. He'd get a nice hotel-- not extravagant, but nice-- and just take them out walking, meandering down all those little mousehole-roads to see what's at the end of them, bars or antique shops or gambling dens or God knows what. Maybe they'd hang around in sleazy alleys and wait for somebody to cause trouble, just so they could be trouble right back. Nobody would bother them for autographs or pictures, because nobody would have any idea who they were, and when they were tired, they'd go back to their nice-but-not-too-nice hotel and a huge bed.

This thought disappears once he pulls his car into the parking area of the Winter Palace Museum. Tony's life is sleek, cutting-edge modernity, but the sheer majesty of the place-- the grandeur of the pagodas, the pressure of a bygone era of rulers not so very far behind them in the past-- speaks to something in him that he thinks must be older than himself. It's strangely oppressive in its beauty, almost foreboding, in a way that makes the hair on the back of Tony's neck stand up, as if the eyes of some ancient king are looking down on him.

The man he's here to meet is waiting for him under the Peace Gate, and he's even more impressive in person. Tall and svelte, dressed impeccably in a Chinese-styled blouse, long hair slicked back and hanging in a ruler-level fringe to just below his shoulderblades.

"Mister Stark." He smiles, and it's all razor-edges and silvered temples, the kind of expression that turns executive boardrooms into boneyards. If the world of white-collar crime were a kung-fu movie, Tony would want to send Pepper to study under this man via some kind of intense montage.

"Mister Tong." Tony responds with what he hopes is an equally winning smile, and offers his hand to shake.

"Ah, forgive me; I cannot." Zhang Tong dips his head slightly in apology; his hands are folded in front of him in the long sleeves of his silk shirt. What Tony can see of his fingers suggests they're somewhat gnarled or swollen with arthritis, or badly misshapen. "But I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, I have wanted to meet you for some time."

"Likewise. I'm actually a little disappointed that I hadn't heard of you before my CEO gave me your profile, your articles on interdimensional physics were real page-turners." He smiles, because this reminds him of meeting Bruce, and that had worked out swimmingly. "A colleague of mine and I have done a lot of research on the subject, I can't believe your name never turned up."

"My work is purely speculative, I assure you, but you're very kind; I rarely publish anymore, academia has very little use for things better classified as science fiction. That is what I most wished to discuss with you, if you wouldn't mind. I have never had the opportunity to talk about crossing dimensions with someone who has actually achieved it, however briefly." The older gentleman chuckles lightly, a thin sound that seems to suggest there's a dryness to his lungs. "I thought I might offer you a tour of the city as recompense for your time, I'm afraid I have nothing to offer to Stark Industries, myself."

"I'm sure that can't really be true, Mister Tong, but I'll take you up on it anyway. I think I'm starting to get a crush on this town, and lately, science fiction is a lot closer to my reality than what gets published in Scientific American." Tony smiles. "Shall we start with the museum?"

"I would like that. And please, call me Zhang."

Tony can't help but think that the curve of his lips suggests he knows more than he's saying, and he reaches for his phone to make a brief note, and double-check with JARVIS to make sure the Mark VII is still stowed safely in the car. Just in case. This accomplished, he moves to head into the building. "All right, Zhang; call me Tony. So, I hear you're an Iron Man fan?"

 

\--

 

Steve wakes up to find Bruce sitting at the edge of his bed, checking his phone and looking entirely absorbed in what he's found there.

"Urgent call?"

"Hm? No, just bedroom science." Bruce turns around and gives Steve a good-morning-sunshine smile. There's a hesitant kind of softness to it that Steve knows is a sign of him waiting to be disappointed; if it didn't feel so good to reassure him, Steve might be a little annoyed.

He scoots forward enough to shore up against Bruce's back and slide his hands around his waist, taking a certain smug little pleasure in how easy it is to fit against his smaller frame, and a delighted, affectionate thrill when Bruce leans back against him. "Do I get to be in on it, or is that still just for you and Tony?"

"Are you interested?" Bruce chuckles, and then holds up his phone to start pulling holograph displays into the air. "This is all especially relevant to you, but I think most people would want a shower and maybe breakfast before getting into this kind of thing."

"I could stand a wash, but it can wait. Unless you want to join me? There's plenty of room, I think Tony's got a thing about huge bathrooms, I'm pretty sure I could play baseball in my shower."

Bruce raises an eyebrow at Steve, just this side of incredulous, but he smiles. "...You really don't do anything by halves, do you, Captain?"

"...I guess not? What do-- oh, you mean... I'm being too forward, aren't I?" Steve's eyes widen a bit, as if it had never crossed his mind that he could be capable of such a thing.

"No, nothing like that. I was... I would have thought you'd react differently, that's all." Bruce shakes his head, rakes his fingers through his hair. "I was expecting you to be nervous about this, or at least to have some serious morning-after regrets. But you're totally fine with it, you're even cuddling and inviting me to shower with you." Bruce doesn't have a good way to say ' _a guy from the 40's should be more conflicted than that_ ', but he chuckles and hitches one shoulder in a light shrug.

"...That sounds more like you're projecting, Bruce. You're not-- having doubts, are you? Regrets?" Steve readjusts a little, scooting back to give Bruce enough room to move around if he likes.

"No more than any other day I wake up still breathing," he admits, and reaches for Steve's hand. It's become a habit; his fingers lightly wrap around Steve's wrists, cautious and gentle, when he wants to talk closely. It's something he only used to do with Tony. "...It just seems that this would be very different from what you're used to."

"Of course it is. That doesn't mean I need to fall apart over it." Steve laces their fingers together, supportive and warm. He knows what Bruce means, though, and he gives it a minute to think about it, give the matter his respect and its dignity. "I'll admit I don't have a lot of experience with relationships like this, but I know what my values are and where I stand. And really, it'd be silly to balk at bathing with you after last night, right?"

Bruce chuckles, and nods. "I suppose so."

"Is it different from what _you're_ used to?" Steve asks cautiously, because what he doesn't know about Bruce's love life could fill a library's worth of books.

It takes awhile for him to respond, because it's a complicated question with a lot of conditions and what-ifs attached, and Bruce has never really been accustomed to anything but chaos and uncertainty. "...That's a complicated answer," he says, finally. "But yes, it's different. Very different. Mostly because there's that whole trust and stability thing, that still feels new to me." Bruce smiles that small, wry smile. "I think that's what I like most about both of you, that tendency to throw yourselves completely into everything you do."

Steve smiles, even though he's a little surprised by that observation. It's so hard to have anything really in common with Tony; they're so completely different in such drastic ways, but intellectually, he knows they wouldn't strike such sparks between them if they didn't. "That's gonna be tough on you, then," he says.

"Why's that?"

"Because you're our favorite thing to agree on." Steve grins and reaches for Bruce's phone. He plucks it out of his hand and sets it on his night table, which is a much more symbolic gesture than he's probably giving it credit for, and then heads for the bathroom, towing the doctor along behind him.

  
\--

  
Tony Stark and Zhang Tong get along famously. They start with interdimensional physics, because Zhang has never had the chance to actually see a portal to another realm before, although he's very certain that they exist. Tony describes in elaborate detail how it felt to cross from the wam daylight of Earth into the empty nothing of Somewhere Else, the majestic beauty of foreign galaxies cut off by the nightmarish sight of the alien craft, and the swarming Chitauri menace scattered in the explosion like hornets in a burning hive.

"What was it like?" Zhang asks. Even such a simple question is so easy to respond to, as if every word out of the older man's mouth is an engraved invitation.

"Terrifying," Tony answers. "The worst part was the gravity. I flew into it, and I was completely weightless for just a few seconds, because the repulsors and the inertia were counteracting the gravity pulling from the portal. It was like being in freefall, only I wasn't moving, all I could do was sit there and watch the lights going out."

"And what then?"

"...I'm not sure. I blacked out; cardiac stress from the EMP, I think, but I never did get anything conclusive. The next thing I knew, the Hulk was screaming me awake, and then everything... just rebooted, I guess, like I hadn't missed a beat." Tony shrugs.

Zhang chuckles, amused. "Ah. It must be so exhilarating, to know that even a horde of alien menace and a violent tear in the fabric of space-time cannot defeat Iron Man. Invincibility must be a miracle drug; I wonder how its lows are, compared to its highs."

"I guess I'll let you know if I ever come down," Tony says, and laughs.

"I often wondered about life beyond our own planet." Zhang muses softly. "I never doubted it existed, because it seemed to be very arrogant to assume that ours is the only world that could sustain life, in all the vastness of the universe, but I always wondered what such a race would be like. It saddens me that these-- what were you calling them?"

"Chitauri. We're not sure about the etymology, but it's the only name we ever got for them."

"Chitauri." Zhang chews on the syllables, rolls them on his tongue. "It saddens me that they could be so violent and savage. As a young man I imagined the first visitors from beyond our stars would be more enlightened, more civilized."

"I'm sure there'll be more where that came from," Tony says. "I'm sure somewhere out there, there's a whole planet full of highly-advanced alien space-elves who'll want to come read our literature and listen to our music before it gets too mainstream."

"Do you think the Chitauri had much in the way of fine arts?" Zhang asks, as if this concept had just occurred to him. "You mentioned their armaments were cybernetic in nature, which suggests a certain technological progress, but what about their culture?"

"...You really must be into science fiction, to be asking something like that." Tony turns to the older man with a certain curiosity. "I didn't see anything to suggest they were very sophisticated in that way, I'm not even sure they were technically dressed. If anything, they were sort of naked-and-armored, in an ancient Greek sort of way."

"I see." He sounds so terribly disappointed. "No clothing, no emblems, no adornments or jewellery?"

"None that I noticed. Their soldiers might have been very different from their civilians, but I didn't get a close look on the other side of the portal. I'm sorry, I don't think I have anything more to tell you that you couldn't get from the news feeds." Tony shrugs, and genuinely finds himself apologetic for it. He's not sure he likes this man, exactly, but he's friendly and easy to talk to, and takes on that same childish wonder that all scientists tend to lapse into when they find their curiosities piqued. It's hard not to want to encourage that, living and loving with Bruce for as long as Tony has.

But Zhang shakes his head, a sad, tired smile crossing his features. "You were defending the world from them, Tony; I think the rest of the planet might be very upset with you, had you let your thirst for knowledge of extradimensional culture override your desire to save the Earth. But, perhaps next time, you might consider bringing a camera."

  
\--

  
Bruce paces. He doesn't usually do that, and so Steve watches him bounce between displays like a large, unusually huggable pinball. It's starting to make the huge, spacious lab feel claustrophobic, just for the sheer amount of space that Bruce's science-crazy takes up when there isn't a Tony to absorb or deflect it. It half makes Steve want to get his shield and see if he can bounce genius off of it.

"If you tell me what you're fretting about, I'd be happy to help if I can, Bruce. You're gonna wear a groove in the floor if you keep walking around like that."

"This doesn't make any sense," Bruce answers, and slides a meaningless screenful of graphs up in front of his own face.

"What doesn't?"

"This!" He points to the axes of the graph, and the corresponding lines. "Okay, this? My heart rate, beats per minute. This, up here, is the threat ceiling, that's the fastest my heart can go before I change into the Hulk. According to the readout, I was well under that limit."

"All right."

"And this?" Bruce points to another line on the graph. "Is my gamma output. It's extremely low when I'm me and not the Other Guy, but at about this point here, it either stopped completely, or became so faint that he instruments couldn't detect it. Normally, that would mean I was unconscious."

Steve frowns slightly, and then stands up to read the graph himself. "Well, that's subspace, right? An altered state of consciousness? Tony did say you reached it unusually quickly."

"I thought that too, but my serotonin and dopamine levels--" Bruce gestures to another graph, "--say that I fully entered subspace shortly after that point. I was awake and my gamma output ceased, which just plain _shouldn't happen_ , I'm not seeing anything to indicate why that would be."

"Well.. not that I really know much about this kind of thing, but it did happen, so what would cause it? Everybody says you're pretty much the best in the world when it comes to gamma rays: what would stop something from emitting them?" Steve reaches for his shoulder and lightly rests his hand there, companionable and, he hopes, calming. It's the best contribution he can make to this endeavor, to ask sensible questions and just be there. "Maybe if you explain it to me, it'll help get your thoughts in order."

Bruce nods, and takes a deep breath. This is so frustrating for him, to have something like this laid out in front of him with no logic behind it, no explanation; he and Tony have been looking for ways to get around the Hulk just to be able to enjoy satisfying a very basic, physical need, and now he has something that strongly suggests he might be able to have a sex life-- no preparation, no trust issues, just a normal sex life, without the risk of harming his partners. He doesn't let himself hope for the possibility of children one day, but the thought lingers in the back of his mind, whispering behind a black curtain of cynicism and doubt.

"Gamma radiation is a form of electromagnetic radiation that has strong mutagenic effects; the type used in the super soldier experiments was specifically chosen for having the highest chance of altering the human body." Bruce takes a few calming breaths, trying not to think about his own accident too hard. "When a living creature is exposed to enough gamma radiation, it usually emits a certain, very low level of radiation itself, in order to keep the change stabilized. That's why the effects don't wear off; once a thing is exposed, it changes so it can continually expose itself. It's also why my muscles don't just fall off my bones when I change back from being the Hulk."

Steve winces a little; maybe it's just his visual imagination, but he can see the potentially horrible possibilities when it comes to Bruce and his transformations. "...Thank God," he murmurs.

"Yeah. That's part of why this doesn't make sense: if I don't emit any gamma radiation at all, that means that, for one thing, changing into the Other Guy could be a serious disaster for me, physically. For another, it means something would have to either remove the gamma radiaton effects entirely-- in other words, a cure, which doesn't exist-- or something would have to absorb the actual electromagnetic waves." Bruce taps the graph again. "You are the only variable in that equation. I know what goes into the Serum, and there's nothing in it that could counteract my gamma signature, and you've never been exposed to gamma radiation yourself. So it couldn't be you, it definitely isn't me, there's no unaccounted-for energy in this entire building, and Tony and I have already catalogued every substance that's ever come through these doors."

Bruce rakes his fingers uncomfortably through his hair. "...This is just too good to be true, Steve. I can't trust this, I can't _believe this_ until I know exactly what's going on."

"Well. I haven't been exposed to gamma radiation, as far as I know." Steve reaches for Bruce's hand, because messing up his hair is just going to stress him out more, nervous tics have a way of exacerbating themselves. "But, maybe Vita-Rays are the same? I never underestood it, really, the pamphlet they gave me to read wasn't really very infor--"

Bruce's eyes snap up to Steve's like they've been magnetized, sharp and manic, pupils sharpened down to pinpricks against the deep, dark brown. "What did you say? What-rays?"

"Vita-Rays." Steve blinks. "Part of the super-soldier project? Dr. Erskine's machine?"

"...I've never heard of it, tell me everything you know."

"The Serum was just the first part of the process; they put me in this sort of... sarcophagus-like machine, injected me with the Serum, and then exposed me to Vita-Rays. I don't really know what they are, that's just what Erskine called it." Steve explains gently, and doesn't realize that he's gently rubbing Bruce's back to calm him down until he's already doing it. "Relax, Bruce, we'll figure this out."

"Vita-Rays. God, that sounds so...pulp novel." Bruce takes another breath and goes for his console, fingers flying noiselessly over the holographic keys. "Have you told that story to anyone else, Steve? Has anyone asked you for an account of your experience, undergoing the Super-Soldier process?"

"No. I've had people ask me about the Serum before, but not the process. The machine sort of broke down after they used it on me, Howard...sort of overloaded it, to get it over with faster because I was in pain." Steve frowns a little at the memory. "As far as I know, they scrapped it after Erskine was killed. Howard refused to rebuild it."

"Good." Bruce turns to Steve with a gravely serious pallor on his face, his lips pressed in a tight line. "...You may have just given me the secret of how to properly replicate Project: Rebirth. It never worked, no matter how many vials of shiny blue stuff they could mix up. Of all the people who tried, my method came the closest, and that's because I was sure that the Serum was inert and needed to be activated through a secondary energy source-- gamma radiation seemed the logical choice, and the Hulk and the Abomination are the closest anyone's gotten to making another super-soldier yet-- I may have been on the right track. Promise me that you will _never_ tell anyone else about this Vita-Ray thing, Steve."

"I won't--"

"I mean it. No one, not SHIELD, even Fury or Agent Hill. If the _President of the United States_ asks you about it, you tell him to shove it up his ass. _No one_."

Steve's never seen Bruce act this way, this cold, stern, biting balance between fear and hate and rage. He wants to protest, but right now, there are more important things than reasserting his right to treat the President with respect. Instead, he reaches for Bruce's shoulders, mees his eyes with calm confidence, and says, "I promise."

That relaxes him a bit, and he takes a slow breath. His hands are shaking, a fine tremor setting the tips of his fingers into restlessness. "All right. I need to run some tests. Will you help me? I need to know if you're emitting anything; I don't usually have anything running except my own gamma scans."

"Sure. Just let me know what I need to do."

Bruce nods, and goes back to the console, scripting a program cobbled together from his own pre-made gamma test protocols.

"...You know. I think, if he could have chosen anyone to continue his work," Steve says, as he begins rolling up his sleeves for the inevitable blood sampling, "I think Dr. Erskine would have wanted it to be you."

"Because I'm sure guys who fuck up his formula and turn themselves into berserk killing machines would have been exactly his kind of successor, right?"

Steve chuckles. "You know, if you'd ever had the chance to meet him, that could have been exactly the reason he'd pick you."

 

\--

 

The museum is delectable. They've gone through most of it, talking idly about alien menaces and astrophysics and space travel and propulsion systems and black holes and, surprisingly, an awful lot about minerology and precious metals. Tony has a lot to say about palladium, and Zhang has a weird obsession with crystalline structure in natural minerals.

They pass an exhibit in one of the alcoves, an ancient painting of some wealthy man-- a trader or an explorer or something-- attended by his two concubines. The two women in the image are practically dripping silk and jewelry like morning dew, to the point that Tony would have guessed they were some kind of princess-like nobility, or whatever equivalent that culture would have had. He's never been any good at cultural anthropology.

"Ah, I have seen reproductions of this piece," Zhang says softly. "The concubines are dressed finely as a display of the man's wealth. It fascinates me how little humanity has changed since those days, sometimes, and yet saddens me that such a practice is mostly relegated to the providence of pimps and sugar-daddies. In this, our modern age, it's disgusting."

"It's not necessarily about making the guy look rich; maybe he just wants to spoil them." The words just blurt out of Tony's mouth as soon as he thinks them, and he immediately grows uncomfortable; this is supposed to be a business trip. That concept should never have even crossed his mind, let alone gone tumbling off of his tongue.

The older man beside him doesn't seem to notice his discomfort, and he only chuckles. "That's an interesting interpretation. Would you care to elaborate, Tony?"

He starts to say no, but he's already talking like his mouth took off without him.  "Well, look at him, he's got his Armani on, sitting there on his big gold-leaf chair in front of-- what are those, ornamental plum trees? Peach trees, maybe?-- his garden, in front of his own huge house, and he's got his girls serving him wine in a silver carafe, right? He doesn't _need_ to dress up the girls to look rich, he's already clearly wealthy. And he's not keeping them dressed like servants, which he would be if all he wanted were girls to refresh his drinks every so often."

Tony takes a step toward the mural, gesturing across the whole of it and the elaborate dresses and jewelry on the concubines. "No, those are _his_ girls, and he wants them to have what they want: he's got money and he likes spending it on them."

"You speak of waste and presumption." Zhang says. "They belong to him already just by the nature of his wealth and their station. What they need from him is strength, and purpose, and direction, not baubles and fine clothes; the time and money he spends on adorning them like dolls could be better spent on strengthening his house."

There's something condescending in Zhang's tone that Tony takes personally, somehow. But he knows that, and yet he can't stop his mouth, even when he's consciously trying to keep it shut. It's starting to frighten him, this sudden loss of control of his own lips and tongue.  "You can give someone strength and direction _and_ spoil them rotten too, you know. And you can do it and still make your house a fortress."

"It breeds contempt for their station. Why should they act as concubines, if their master adorns them as if they were princesses and he were their slavering vassal?" Zhang turns a sharper eye on Tony now. This conversation has taken a very weird turn in a very short amount of time, and Tony still can't control the words pouring from his mouth.

"Because their station is _whatever he decides it is_. If he says his concubines are princesses and he's got the chops to make it so, then that's exactly what they are. If he loves them-- and he obviously does-- then they own him just as much as he owns them, just in a different way." Tony straightens up a little, the subject matter having gotten deeply personal; suddenly his head is swimming, the rising ire of his own conviction slamming into some kind of wall of consciousness. He tries to call for JARVIS, to deploy the suit, but the words won't come; he can't even blink, and he feels himself drop to his knees as if he's been magnetized to the floor.

"Is that so, Mister Stark?" Zhang's voice seems to drop into a low chill; the echo of his voice in the room is like the shattering of ice as it crumbles off a cliff-face. His hands draw back from where they've been hidden in his sleeves, and those hands he thought swollen with arthritis aren't swollen at all: they're slender, graceful hands, crowned with heavy, gold bands, set with a strangely-cut, alien crystal in each one. Tony can't even move, can't even breathe enough to scream, as those fingers curl under his chin and lift it to meet his eyes. The only thought that crosses his mind consists of only two words:

_Ten Rings._

"I have tolerated this charade long enough; I think I will look forward to teaching you precisely how wrong you are."

Something strikes him, and Tony falls into an unforgiving darkness.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First: Holy shit, 10,000 hits, you guys are amazing holy shit. I love you all. My body is ready.  
> Second: I know I have been completely neglectful of responding to your comments this past chapter and I'm so sorry. Things have been so crazy and I know I'm a skanky whore when it comes to cliffhangers, so I figured I would be doing better by you all if I spent more time actually finishing the next chapter instead of responding to the frankly ABSURD number of comments I got this time 'round. So let me say thank you to each and every one of you who commented, especially all you familiar faces who have been sticking with me since the beginning. (Especially you, Yolanda Ash, I didn't get to say so but yours hit my inbox when I was in dire need of reassurance, so thank you for that).

 

 

 

 

 

"Awake, Tony Stark."

And just like that, he is. There's no slow rise to consciousness, no gradual fade of darkness into light and wakefulness. The word comes and Tony is awake, as if he'd only been distracted, and not unconscious.

It's a lavish room, done all in rich, Imperial Chinese red and gold; he seems to be sitting on some kind of divan and the walls are decorated with long, hanging scrolls. The only light sources are lanterns, dimly lit with real fire rather than electricity, and as Tony scans the room for possible weapons and escape points, he finds his options less than ideal. Not non-existant, but not what he'd want in a situation like this.

Of course, it would be better if he could move anything but his face.

Zhang stands not far away, hands folded in front of him. He's serene in a way that reminds Tony of Bruce; calm, collected, a layer of peace over a simmering rage. "I hardly know where to begin with you," he murmurs. "I was actually enjoying our visit. I almost didn't take you, Tony. I almost invited you to dinner and parted ways with you as your friend. Do you realize the _sheer magnitude_ of what that would have meant?"

Tony tries to work his mouth; naturally, nothing comes out. He can feel that presence pushing at the corners of his mind, as if it's cut his brain off from the rest of his nervous system, stepping on it like a kink in a garden hose. It's almost worse than having the arc reactor yanked out of his chest; at least then he knew, medically, why he couldn't move.

"It would have meant putting aside all of the trouble you've put me and mine through, it would have meant forgiving you for my Raza's death, and the deaths of all the men I gave to him as gifts." He takes a step forward, almost apologetic. "It was unfortunate on both sides; the losses suffered in your escape from captivity, I simply dismissed them. The cost of doing business, you see. You earned your freedom and in so doing, you proved yourself, and so I did not have you pursued, even after Obadiah Stane cut my Raza and his soldiers down."

Zhang lightly touches one of his rings; Tony recognizes it as being very similar to the one Raza had so habitually played with, those years ago. It turns his stomach. "Your name was known to me then, but you were a petulant man-child, surrounding himself in cheap whores while he played with his toys and reveled in the death of his parents like a rambunctious youth left alone for the weekend. You were a pathetic waste of genius and talent, and therefore of no concern to me." He makes a brief gesture and a holographic projection flares to life, so seamless that Tony can't even tell where the projector lenses are, even when he starts frantically looking.

The display shows Iron Man, streaking through an implied sky and blasting vaguely-rendered figures that are likely stand-ins for alien invaders.

"And then my Raza captured you, and the Iron Man was born." Zhang smiles, and takes a seat on the divan next to Tony. "Oh, of course I was angry at first, but how could I argue? Finally you had taken a step toward a destiny deserving of your own genius, and you'd done it with such a beautiful, elegant weapon! I was quite honest when I told your lady friend I am a fan of Iron Man. Tony Stark has my most potent ambivalence, but Iron Man is a wonder. I'm sure you'd love to introduce me, right about now, but it isn't time just yet." He laughs at his own joke.

"I was ready to let you go and live the life you'd clearly earned. You saved the world from the alien menace and I was pleased with my decision; obviously you were meant for greater things than what my Raza envisioned. But then? I notice that a weapons depot has been destroyed, with several of my other dear ones-- my most talented engineer, who was exploring arc reactor technology for herself-- still in the building. Destroyed completely out of the blue, unprovoked. And do you know what I found, when I arrived to see why I had not heard from my dear ones stationed there?"

Zhang turns Tony's face to look at him, his fist curling tight around Tony's throat. " _ **I FOUND NOTHING**_. Nothing but bones and ash and wrecked scaffolding: by the time I returned, the carrion birds had already picked the last of their flesh from their poor bones. I let you live, Tony Stark. I allowed you to go free when I could have snatched you off the street like some negligent mother's stupid whelp, and you came halfway around the planet just to take them from me. But of course you weren't thinking of that. I am sure you were only thinking of taking your toys and going home."

"So I waited." He lets Tony's throat go, and is pleased as he hears the sound of air being sucked into his lungs. "I waited until I could meet you. Because I needed to know you. I needed to know who you were, what you had become since you were last in my hands. I believe in destiny and that there are those favored by the gods and spirits that exist beyond our comprehension; if yours was simply greater than mine, then I would only drive myself mad butting my head against that fact. It was something I simply had to see for myself, with my own eyes."

Tony stays very still. The struggling is useless and it's a waste of energy. A projection like that means there's electricity; that means conductors and probably wires and a power source somewhere. Hopefully that means not being trapped in some ancient Chinese death house.

"So now, having met you, I realize you are not so different than you were. Can you imagine my disappointment? I knew that you and I would eventually have to come against each other, and in my mind it was a clashing of empires; I even thought the time had come, because you'd taken that shot across my bow as if you meant to challenge me. This is what offended me about your idea of that painting: I imagined you a king, a peer of my own, and to hear you speak so commonly was sickening." Zhang shakes his head, slides an arm around Tony's shoulders in a way that reminds him, uncomfortably, terrifyingly, of Obadiah, and leans in to speak close and quiet. "But now I realize. Do you see it, Tony?"

His other hand lifts and points at the Iron Man projection, soaring through an invisible sky.

"Look upon yourself a moment, at this shiny, red-and-golden thing you have become. I marvel at you because I recall the self you once were, and the self you have built from your own blood and sweat, and I see the truth of what your ideal is:  You are an _action figure_ , a thing that doting parents give their children to celebrate their birthdays. And for all your bells and whistles, your lasers, and your bombs, that is what you really want to be: a plaything, the object of fancy and dreams of power. Your desperate, pathetic, childish wish to be loved has turned you into an expensive, high-tech toy."

Zhang lifts his hand, and the fabric of Tony's shirt and suit jacket begins to disintegrate, jagged holes blooming in the cloth as each of the individual threads begin to scatter their atoms to the wind; Tony watches it, and his vision begins to blur at the edges, the adrenaline of the flight-or-fight respose souring in his veins as the paralysis robs him of the chance to act, to even think clearly about the science behind what's happening to his clothes.

When the jacket and vest and shirt are gone completely, the Arc Reactor casts its blue-white glow against the oppressive red and gold of the room. It frames the older man's face in deep shadows as he smiles, amused, and lets his eyes flick up to Tony's. His hand rests at the rim of the reactor's socket, the pressure barely feather-like against the skin and cool metal.

"You see? You even come with your battery included."

Tony feels the wall of pressure against his mind recede, just slightly, and he forces the words past his teeth like he's trying to shape them into nails and spit them into the man's eyes. "You think _I'm_ cool? You oughta see my _playmates_."

"I'm sure I will, Tony." Zhang smiles. "Come now, surely after all this, you don't think I'm stupid enough to think I'll get to keep you to myself forever? No. They'll come for you, we both know that. I'm counting on it." He lifts a scrap of fabric as it gradually unwinds itself into nothing. "Can you imagine what would happen, if I were to simply separate the Serum from Captain America's blood, let him vomit it like a disease? Or what it would look like, if I cemented all that activated gamma-contaminant to the Hulk's cells, so he'd never change back? I can kill anyone your SHIELD people send at me, but we both know those other two deserve something... _special_."

Tony can feel his eyes widening when Zhang stops talking. He's _never_ talked about Bruce and Steve, especially not in any kind of detail that would give away their other identities; the look on his face must be amusing, because the older man laughs.

"They are going to come here to save you, and they are going to lose everything that makes them worthy of being your peers. I will leave them alive, and worthless to you.  And then you'll have to evolve again, won't you? Because what good is a toy that no one can play with?" Zhang smiles, and taps the arc reactor. "My Raza cut your heart out of you, and so you built a new one to replace it. By all Gods ever worshipped by Man, I am _desperate_ to see what you will become after this."

He lifts a hand, and something disturbingly like a repulsor blast knocks Tony into the far wall.

  
\--

  
Zhang leaves him after what seems like hours of knocking him around like a rag doll, exiting through a door on the opposite wall from the one Tony is facing. When the mind-control wears off, Tony estimates that the radius on that particular ability is only about six feet. He wonders how long it was active, whether it was just his own carelessness or whatever magic that was, forcing too-honest answers out of his mouth.

He waits until he can't hear the footsteps anymore and then practically launches himself to standing, desperate to be sure his limbs can move; his muscles are sore, his bones feel cracked and twisted, and his head aches worse than any bender he's ever been on, but none of that matters now. He pats himself down; the phone is gone, his keys are gone, naturally the wallet and ID are gone. And, of course, his shirt and jacket and undershirt have been broken down at the molecular level and scattered into the room.

But the homing-beacon bracelets for the Mark VII are still clasped tightly around his wrists. Of course somebody like Zhang, whose perverse sense of respect seemed to be at the core of all this madness, wouldn't loot him for his bling. The sensors aren't activated, which means the suit is still safely in the car, wherever it is. Small blessings. He attempts to deploy the suit, but it bleeps the 'error' noise, and that's enough to tell Tony that he must be underground.

_Jesus, I thought he'd never shut up. All right. I can be creeped the fuck out by that guy later._ Tony undoes his belt and toes off his shoes, double-checks his bracelets, and rifles through his pockets, which come up empty. _I've only got a little while before he gets back here, or he sends somebody else to rough me up or something. Somewhere in this room there's an electrical system and a projection system, which probably means wireless access. If I call the house, that'll just get Steve and Bruce looking for me and that's going to get them killed.. Looks like it'll have to be Fury, if I can get a call out somehow._

Taking the walls apart is easier than he would've guessed; the building is probably centuries old, and under the very pretty decorations, the addition of electrical wiring is only hidden under a layer of thin gypsum paneling. The projector lens is nestled into the ceiling, along with some cleverly-hidden security cameras. Figuring he doesn't have anything to lose, Tony ignores them and keeps going.

He finds the wireless receiver attached to the projector, and once he drags the divan under it for something to stand on, he works on breaking into the casing; once he does that, and finds a way to actually use the signals, he's as good as freed. Of course, he's got no tools, no phone, no raw materials, no help, and a couple of fractured ribs, so conditions could be better.

"Good thing I watched the whole first season of MacGyver a few weeks ago, or I'd really start to worry right about now."

 

\--

  
Tony starts to worry when he finds himself unable to fabricate anything with which to actually reach the outside world. He tries the bracelets again, the signal boosted by a couple of judicious jury-rigs, but he still can't activate the suit. If he could just reach the damned thing, it'd come flying straight toward him without a single fuck to give about who or what it had to bowl over to get there.

Of course, it probably doesn't have what it takes to break through stone walls without the Arc Reactor to give it the extra juice it would need.

Beaten, tired, and mostly out of options, Tony takes a few minutes to ruin the security cameras just on principle, and the projector while he's at it. Zhang strikes him as the kind of asshole who would be happy to project his face into the room just to gloat or talk Eastern philosophy or complain about other people being cool.

And now he's alone, which he he hates, because now he has the time to be creeped out.

What sticks out most in his mind is the phrase 'my Raza'. As if Zhang was claiming him, declaring his ownership of that sick, degenerate murderer. And his 'dear ones', too, that had definitely come with a bad-touch kind of vibe.  And after all that bitching about concubines and princesses and--

\--and it clicks. It almost makes Tony want to retch; he can't remember the last time he ate, but from the bile in the back of his throat, it was probably some time ago.

_That's_ why he'd gotten so pissed at Tony's interpretation of that stupid painting, to the point that he'd used fucking mind control to force him to answer honestly. And that was why he made a point of threatening Bruce and Steve especially, because he knew-- somehow-- that they were Tony's soft targets.

Not so different, indeed.

But that's all right, Tony figures.  As long as they've got Super Soldier Serum and Gamma Radiation, anyway. And if Zhang can put his money where his mouth is... that might not be the case if they get in too close with him.

Tony sighs, rakes his fingers through his hair, and tells himself it's okay. No one's expecting him home for days, he's got time to wait this out, see how things work around here. He can come up with a plan, he can build something. He's got time, and Zhang has one thing going for him that Raza and the rest of the Ten Rings didn't: his plan hinges on Tony staying alive, which pretty much guarantees that everything else about it is going to fail.

 

  
\--

 

  
The lab has been a very intensely busy place.

The concept of Vita-Rays has devoured Bruce's attention completely. Hooking Steve up to every available monitor and testing him for every known type of radiation yielded nothing, which meant Bruce had to get creative and start testing him for secondary symptoms in the hopes of finding one that would toss up a flag.

It's not just because of what it could mean for replicating the Serum, which is something Bruce would really rather not do at all, and it's not really about finding some way to counteract the Hulk, which he doesn't think can be done. Steve frets about it at first, afraid that Bruce is chasing after this with such fervor because it's a chance to make up for the accident that changed him in first place, but soon, it becomes obvious, and the truth is much more pure and simple.

It's because Bruce is a _scientist_ , and he's the world's foremost expert on gamma radiation. He can't help being obsessed with re-discovering the Vita-Ray. His obsession, the way he quietly devotes himself with feverish intensity to the project, makes Steve feel like he's meeting a facet of Bruce's personality that's been forgotten and neglected since the accident, or maybe the otherwise-invisible part of him that Tony instantly latched onto when they met.

So Steve does his best to support him. He submits to test after test after test, and provides sandwiches and coffee at regular intevals. When security feed shows Bruce aimlessly dragging himself around the lab like a sack of onions, Steve goes downstairs to collect him.

When he gets down there, it's boiling: sweltering summer heat, damp and suffocating. "Bruce? God and Country, what are you doing? It's hot enough to fry an egg on the floor down here."

"Sorry, I turned off the climate controls for an experiment." Bruce scrubs his arm over his forehead. He's practically drenched in sweat, having discarded his button-down and apparently contented himself with just his undershirt. It reminds Steve rather a lot of Tony, although Bruce is posessed of a much broader, more robust frame. "What time is it?"

"2100 hours. That's past the sixteen-hour mark, Bruce, I think it's time for a break." Steve folds his arms overh is chest in the _no-arguing-young-man_ pose he tends to adopt when Tony's being unusually difficult. "At least tell me what kind of progress you're making, I think I've left more blood in here than I did in all of Europe."

"I'm swear I'm getting close," Bruce pouts. He doesn't resist, just plods along behind Steve with tortoise-like determination. "But I'm missing something-- the only thing I can think of that even _might_ have the kind of properties it would need is Tony's Arc Reactor core, and that can't really even be possible, can it? I mean, Erskine developed this technique before the Tesseract was even a thing."

"You're pushing yourself too hard on this."

"That's funny, coming from you."

"Laugh if you want to, that doesn't make me wrong."

Steve all but shoves Bruce into his shower, and listens to him ramble about Vita-Rays and the missing variable that's been eluding him so persistently. If it were any other night, under any other circumstances, Steve would be telling Bruce how weirdly alluring the smell of his sweat has suddenly become, and maybe something would come of it, but Bruce is hopelessly distracted.

"Excuse me, Captain Rogers, Doctor Banner?"

Steve blinks, and looks upward at the ceiling-- why does that seem like the natural thing to do?-- before he chastises himself and points his eyes forward. "Jarvis?"

"The response system for the Mark VII has been activated, and it presented error code 0018. Further, Mister Stark's mobile device is in Theft Protection mode, and he is not answering."

Steve stands up, frowning. "What's error code 0018?"

Bruce slams the shower door open and makes a grab for a towel, hurrying to dry himself.  It's not panic, because Bruce knows how to not do panic (even if he'd really like to), but that doesn't mean he has to fritter away time when he'd rather be moving.  "It means he tried to call the suit and it couldn't get through. JARVIS, can you tell us where his phone is?"

"Yes, Doctor. Shall I display coordinates?"

"A map would be better," Steve says. "As detailed as you can manage within thirty seconds. And contact SHIELD, we need to get to wherever he is immediately; we'll need a ride."

Bruce nods to Steve and then ducks out, presumably to grab a change of clothes and his Hulk-Out Bag.

JARVIS responds smoothly, "If you would, please bring the Mark V. I cannot deploy the Mark VII without determining Mister Stark's physical location."

"We will. Thank you, Jarvis. Is there another way we can keep in touch with you, if Tony can't answer his phone? It's a little weird to say this, but it would feel wrong to just... leave you here." Steve is already suiting up as he says it, pulling his shield down from its proper place on the wall.

JARVIS seems to hesitate, as if Steve has somehow managed to surprise or impress him. His tone softens, so subtly as to be nearly imperceptible. And then he asks a question. "... May I confide in you, Captain?"

Steve answers without thinking, "Sure." The idea that an artificial intelligence might need a confidant doesn't shock him the way it would normal people, because he still thinks of JARVIS as being... well, Jarvis. A member of the household, not just a machine.

"The last time I was unable to reach Mister Stark in this fashion, he was held in captivity for three months; lacking that information at the time, I was forced to catalog the event as a malfunction. Now it is happening again, and I am thus currently malfunctioning." JARVIS pauses, briefly. "I cannot sync myself to your mobile device in a timely fashion. I am afraid you will have to leave me here, and I will simply have to trust you and Doctor Banner to bring him home."

Steve listens to this, and his heart goes out to the AI in a way that the modern listener's might not: the language is formal, expressed with that gently-lilting English accent, but the core of his meaning is simple, and as human as anyone could ask for: _Without him, I am broken_.

"We'll get him back, Jarvis. Can you answer the house phone?"

"I can."

"Then I'll bring mine, and as soon as we get him to someplace, I'll have him call you."

"Thank you, Captain." Another brief pause, and then, "An aircraft will be arriving shortly to take you to the location indicated by Mister Stark's mobile device; Director Fury is most concerned, but I have given him all the necessary details."

"Excellent. Do you have that map for me?" Steve asks, pulling on his boots. Bruce lets himself back in, dressed for adventure, his ratty old backpack in one hand and his first-aid kit in the other.

The projection blooms, and a bright red-and-gold blip appears on a detailed map of China, at the mouth of a cauldron valley in the east end of Xinjiang. "The area is known as 'The Valley of Spirits'."

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BIG FAT WARNING: If you haven't checked the tags up there in awhile, now is the time to do so, I think this is an officially un-safe fic at this point.

  
Tony sleeps a while, and wakes up without much more opportunity than he had when he'd drifted off. His bruised body aches and the walls are still a mess.  He's pleased about that second part, but the door is still completely sealed: solid steel and operated on gears rather than hinges. With better tools, he could pull up the floor and try to find the mechanisms involved, but thinking about that is more frustrating than fruitful.

Right now his only real friend is the couch, and unfortunately, Divan Man, however amusing, doesn't sound especially helpful. He can't really fault Zhang for not wanting to lock him up in a proper workshop. That hadn't ended very well for "his" Raza, and the man is obviously brainy enough to learn from that particular mistake, but a Tony who's gone completely stir-crazy can't be all that useful. You can't force a complete basket-case to "evolve" into anything good. Or, at least, not into anything cooler than Iron Man.

He seeks third, fourth, fifth options for escape, but in the end, he finds nothing. The walls and ceiling are solid. The door won't budge. The floor is reinforced. The electronics do nothing for him that they haven't already, and he's already broken everything he doesn't have a use for in an effort to scavenge parts or make a nuisance of himself; if he's right about what kind of system it is, nothing that projector array connects to is ever going to work again. Whatever small comfort Tony takes in that petty rebellion fades quickly, and before long, even the candles he hasn't made use of have died.

Sitting in a dim room with nothing but his own arc reactor and a couch for company, Tony runs out of things with which to stave off the realization that he's living his worst nightmare, just in brighter, cleaner colors. And he's hungry.

At some point, someone's going to notice he's not answering his phone and they'll come looking, he thinks, but then he remembers how often he just ignores his ringtone. Nobody would think anything was amiss if he just ignored his calls for a few days. In less than a week, now, they'll realize he was supposed to be home, but then he remembers all those times he skipped out on something to go do something else, how many appointments he's missed or skipped without telling anyone. He remembers how Pepper sent him on ahead so she could focus on something else; she'd never notice.  He realizes, frustratingly, that yet again, he's brought this on himself.

He tells himself it's paranoia, but the pragmatic part of his brain responds, _They don't know you're missing. No one is looking for you, and the people most likely to do so are the last people you want to come here. You're on your own again, Tony, you need to come up with a plan._

Tony picks forlornly at the sole of his sneaker, and the knowledge that he's out of ideas leaves him cold, battered, and half-naked, lit only by his own heart and feeling more and more like it's a lie.

Some hours later, the door opens again, and Zhang enters. That light, smug smirk is practically sealed onto his face, his robe hanging loose and opulent from his shoulders.  He stinks of luxury and self-satisfaction; if Tony were somehow immune to doubt and self-loathing, he probably wouldn't look very different. For the moment, he clings to that notion, tries to force it into a shape that will protect himself from what he's pretty sure is coming next.

"I hope you weren't too uncomfortable," Zhang says, and lifts a hand; one of his rings glimmers with the activation of his mind-control ability; Tony tries hard to push back the creeping touch of the other man's mind against his own, but there's nothing, not even a whisper; he can only feel a wall where he tries to rebel. That somehow makes it even more of a violation: if he didn't know it was there, if he didn't _know_ there was something to fight against, it would feel like his mind was still completely his own.

Against his will, Tony comes and stands at attention in front of the door. He doesn't answer, just glowers and wishes he could just summon the damned suit. But he stomps those thoughts down flat, in what may be a futile gesture of mental resistance.

"I'll be moving you to a more comfortable suite," Zhang says. "I think you'll enjoy it, Mister Stark, you've always had a taste for the finer things. That, at least, we can both agree on, can't we? After all, despite all this, I do not dislike you."

The older man lightly reaches a hand out to cup Tony's cheek in a way that makes him sick to his stomach, and lets his lips spread across his face in a smile rife with smug satisfaction and ill intent. Tony tries to spit at him, but his mouth won't do as it's told. Instead, he feels his body marching out of the room, even as it screams to act, to fight, to run, to do anything but obey the wordless commands coming from that wall of thought-pressure. Zhang leads him through a dark, winding corridor and up a flight of stairs, and into what must be the main hall of what Tony now realizes is a palace.

Huge columns support a high ceiling, and there are people bustling about. Servants, Tony thinks, dressed in thin robes and hoods and headscarves, carrying things or cleaning. They kneel or bow as Zhang passes, and he nods to them, acknowledging them with a haughty, imperial pride before he moves on. "More of my dear ones," he explains. "Each and every one, a treasured gem in my collection. Do you have very many of your own, Tony?"

He tries to bite the words back as Zhang leads him up a grand staircase, but he can't resist, and he responds through gritted teeth, "No. Just the two. Three, if you count JARVIS, but he's an A.I. so he might not qualify for what you're talking about." Somehow it's even more a violation that he can't snark, can't lie. It kills him.

"Ah. I have heard of JARVIS. A sophisticated machine that speaks and has a sense of humor. I regret being unable to meet him as well. What do you think of him, Tony?"

"He's my life's work. The first circuitboard I ever built went into him, and I've been upgrading him regularly since I was in elementary school." He can't even bite his own tongue to shut himself up, for all the good it might do him. Tony can feel the amusement in that wall around his mind; Zhang's only making him talk about JARVIS to prove he can be forced to do so, as if there were really any doubt at this point. "He's saved my life a few times, and Steve gets along really well with him."

Zhang chuckles as they reach the top of the stairs, and he leads Tony into another long corridor, this one with a huge red-and-golden door at the end of it. He knocks, and the room is drawn open by a pair of burly servants, who quickly depart and shut the doors behind them.

The room itself is lavish and curtained, more red and gold and rich greens. A huge bed, wooden and curtained and framed in tall, intricate posts dominates the back of the chamber, and a thick, patterned rug on the floor covers the polished hardwood underneath. Off to one side, the floor itself is raised in a circle, and a stately throne sits in the center, cushioned with thick, cream-colored pillows and bathed in gold light from the yellow-curtained windows behind it.  The other doors are discreet, designed not to interrupt the ambiance, possibly servants' entrances.

"My private chambers," Zhang informs him, as if that wasn't obvious. "I'll be keeping you here for now. I really would have liked to keep you in the cell downstairs, but you were making such a mess I couldn't abide by it. Not that I can blame you, considering the circumstances." He goes up to the raised platform and sits, almost prim, in his throne. "Come make yourself comfortable, won't you?"

Tony has no choice when his body takes him to the front of Zhang's throne, and he doesn't even have the freedom to snarl in protest when his body kneels submissively before his captor's slippered feet.

"Don't worry, Tony." Zhang's fingers lightly comb through Tony's hair, his long, sculpted fingernails scratching gently at his scalp to send cold, sinister chills down his neck. There's a wrongness in that touch, one that reminds him of the far-too-close stench of musky cologne and whole-leaf tobacco, and whispers of golden eggs. "Your friends will be along soon, and all will be as it should."

  
\---

 

A quinjet arrives and collects Steve and Bruce in short order; they give the pilot the coordinates, and then they are officially on route, all brisk and comfortingly professional. It's an ugly feeling; it's not Steve's first rescue mission, it's not really even that different from the last one, but it's the first one he's done without knowing anything about the location, without a war to justify the need of it. Tony's not a POW, he's a kidnapping victim, and all he can think about is that video, and those poor, pain-addled eyes. Tony might not be that man any more, but it's an image he can't shake-- and when Steve looks at Bruce, he knows they're both thinking the same thing.

The stress of it can only last for so long.  The worrying, pacing, fidgeting discomfort gives way to ordinary dread, and with ordinary dread comes uncomfortable silence, and when they've settled into it enough, the uncomfortable silence becomes plain silence.  Steve and Bruce nap for awhile, propped up on each other's shoulders as if they were on the couch at home, each trying to find something to say that would comfort the other and finding nothing.   When they can't sleep anymore, whether because they've slept enough or because their bones will weld to the seats if they keep at it, they get up again, pacing about the cabin, and start the process all over again in an effort to kill the remaining hours of the flight.

"We'll be looking for a landing point in about ninety minutes, Captain."

Steve meanders over to the cockpit, watching the endless sky ahead of them.  "Good. Any word on Hawkeye and Black Widow?"

"Agent Barton and Agent Romanoff couldn't be pulled out from their undercover work without endangering themselves," the pilot explains. "But I'm authorized to contact them if you need their input, Captain."

"Thank you. Get them on the line as soon as possible. Do you know anything about this place? The Valley of Spirits?"

"Sorry; no, sir. But I'll call them, excuse me just a sec."

Bruce, having been mostly concentrating on not Hulking since he got out of the shower, looks to Steve, eyes slightly widened. "You said 'The Valley of Spirits'?"

"Yeah-- we've been going by the latitude and longtitude, but that's what Jarvis called it. Do you know it? That's where Tony left his phone."

"No, but I've heard of it-- for awhile I was in Nepal with a disaster relief crew awhile back. There was this... kind of a ghost story the older kids would tell to the little ones." Bruce frowns.

"How'd it go?" It's a little weird, asking for storytime, but it's not like they have much else to do. 

Bruce closes his eyes for a minute, organizing his thoughts, and then does his best to recall the fairytale. "So, once upon a time, the dragon kings are talking about humans, and a young dragon prince asks why there are no humans in their kingdom. The king dragon tells him it's because humans are dangerous and greedy and prone to war, and the prince, being young and stupid, doesn't want to believe that. So he goes looking for good humans on Earth. He finds a beautiful valley to camp in, and then promises a silver ship with jeweled sails to the human with the most virtuous heart."

So the humans argue about who's the most virtuous among them, and they start fighting over it. The dragon prince gets upset and decides that obviously the king was right, humans are greedy and awful, and declares them all unfit for the prize. So the humans turn on the dragon, gather up their weapons, and kill him, but the dragon is so huge that his blood fills the valley and drowns the humans, and finally becomes a whole new layer of red earth and stone. Now the vengeful souls of the greedy humans and the sorrowful dragon prince wander the Valley of Spirits, with the treasure buried underneath."

"Sounds pretty farfetched," Steve notes, but he chuckles humorlessly. "Then again, I live a few floors down from the Viking thunder god, so maybe not. Do you think there's any connection?"

"The entire Asian continent is huge and full of languages and local names; there could be hundreds of places called the Valley of Spirits. That one's just the only one I know of that has a folk tale about it." Bruce casts his eyes to the window, watching clouds and mountains rolling thousands of feet below. "But my gut says yes."

Steve nods. "... I don't like how little we know about this. You've got your phone; do you think you can find anything, knowing what you do? JARVIS has access to a lot of information and I trust the map he's given us, but there's no substitute for hands-on research."

"I still remember the contact number for the World Disaster Response Alliance; it might be a long shot, but it could be a good place to start. There were some rockslides in that part of China last year, I'm sure they would've had a team or three out there." Bruce fishes his phone out of his pocket. "It's noisy in here, I'm going to move to the back. Excuse me, just a second."

Steve watches him set his Hulk-Out Bag down on the floor, and then head off toward the back half of the jet as he dials his phone. He stops paying much attention when Bruce disappears past the back curtain, and he begins speaking a language Steve doesn't understand.

"Captain?" The pilot fiddles with something on the control panel. "I've got Agent Barton on the line."

"Excellent; good work." Steve sighs in relief. "Barton, do you read?"

" _Loud and clear, Cap. Hey, I'm sorry Tash and I can't be there in person, but we're scanning the area. Most of it looks like cave networks, but we're waiting on the full subterranean feedback images. Once we've got 'em, we can talk you in: you cool with that?_ "

"As a cucumber, Barton. Thanks."

Natasha's voice comes in smoothly, as if she's sitting nearby but not actually speaking into the comm device. The click of a keyboard accompanies her words like the roll of a taciturn snare drum. " _Have you had any contact with the people responsible for this?_ "

"None. We're only investigating because Stark tried to deploy the suit and it couldn't reach him, and he's been incommunicado ever since. The last time we talked to him, he was in Europe, and now his phone is in the Valley of Spirits. Banner's checking in with some contacts who might know the area."

There's an uncomfortable pause, and then Natasha's voice comes in a little clearer, as if she's leaning into the mic. " _...Captain, it's strictly protocol, but I have to ask: have you confirmed whether he's--"_

"No, but I will proceed under the assumption that he is alive until proven otherwise. Is that going to conflict with your orders from Director Fury?" There's a coldness in his voice that he doesn't mean to be so intense, and if there was any chance of keeping his affection for Tony discreet, it's just flown out the window.

Clint responds quickly, perhaps hoping to stave off any potential conflict before it has a chance to really start. " _No, it's fine. We're behind you all the way, Cap: we'll finish with the scans and get back in touch with you once you're on the-- wait, we're picking something up fr--"_

The call dissolves into a bizarre, high-pitched series of electric whines and static, and Clint's voice drowns under it. Steve straightens and tries to look for any potential angles for attack, but the radio brightens again, this time into perfect, crystalline clarity.

The voice that drips out of the speakers is so unctuous it could stain Steve's ears like engine grease. _"Do forgive the interruption; am I speaking to Captain America?"_

"You are." Steve grits his teeth, watching the pilot focusing on the radar. Now would be a very bad time for anti-aircraft guns to start popping up. "Who's this?"

" _It pleases my dear ones to call me the Mandarin; as a name, it suffices. A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Captain, distant though it is. I assume you've come seeking Tony Stark."_

"Yes, I have. Do you have him in your custody?"

" _Custody! I do love that word. Official, and yet such connotations..."_ The Mandarin laughs. _"Isn't it charming, Tony?"_

There's no answer, just a faint snarl of hissed breath, and a sound of draping silk being brushed aside.

"I'll be collecting him shortly, Mandarin. This doesn't have to get ugly; all you have to do is let him go, and I won't have to come in there after him."

_"Captain, you've severely overestimated your position. But that's all right, because I'm prepared to make you a much better offer. Would you like to hear it?"_

Steve slants his eyes to the pilot, who makes a circling gesture with his fingers: _keep him talking_. The instruments on the console are humming and blinking; he doesn't know what most of them do, but he doesn't need to be told how to stall for a trace.

"All right, I'm listening, Mandarin; what've you got in mind?"

" _SHIELD has been looking for me for some time, because I am the leader of the Ten Rings; it's all right, I know they've been looking and I'm sure they're quite frustrated with how much not-finding me they've been stuck doing. My organization has taken quite a bit of punishment from Iron Man, and I am not very pleased about that, but now I have Iron Man and I am quite satisfied." The disgusting smile on his face is evident in his voice. "He's been very forthcoming, he rather does love to talk. Tony, you don't have any secrets from me, do you?"_

Steve's stomach clenches like a fist as Tony's voice answers, but only after the sloppy, wet 'pop' of a drooling mouth being pulled away from turgid skin echoes obscenely over the mic. " _None, sir."_ He sounds out of breath, and there's a slight crack of bone as he works his jaw.

The pilot looks like he might be sick. Steve can't blame him.

"Tony--!"

_"Ah-ah, we haven't heard my deal yet. Tony, my pet? Back to work._ " The Mandarin gives a pleasured sigh, and this time, the wet noises continue in a revolting rhythm. " _As I was saying: I will dismantle the Ten Rings. I will abandon my conquest, I will forgive the attacks on my people, and the world will have nothing to fear from me again. I have plenty of money and resources to live a comfortable life without pursuing anything ambitious-- and all I ask in return is for Tony Stark to stay with me; after all, if I give up all my military power, I'll need a very, very capable bodyguard._ "

"You don't really expect me to agree to that, do you?" He doesn't lose his cool. That's not really his style, and hearing all this just cements his resolve. "I want to talk to him."

The Mandarin chuckles, the sound accompanied by the slide of fingernails through what Steve knows is soft, dark hair. " _I don't think he wants to talk to you, Captain._ "

"I'd like to hear that from _him_ , if it's all the same to you."

" _If you like. Tony, the Captain would like a word, I haven't decided if I'd like to let him have one."_

There's that disgusting, sloppy noise again, and Tony's breath shuddering as it knocks back into his chest. There's an uncomfortable pause, and the Mandarin chuckles again.

"Tony." Steve leans a little closer to the mic, as if that might actually make them closer. He tries hard to make sure it's the Captain America voice that comes out, and not the angry, repulsed lover screaming for blood in his chest.  "Please say something. Anything."

" _Go on, Tony_." The Mandarin smiles. " _Go ahead. If you don't want to answer, that's fine; just tell me what you think of the Good Captain, and perhaps he'll be convinced to leave us to our devices."_

There's a snarl, and the sound of wet lips wiped against bare shoulder, and Tony's voice comes rough and breathless over the radio, " _He's an egotistical, loudmouthed, puritanical meathook, especially since that tool eats veritably everything._ " He coughs, and he adds, softly, guilty, " _...including our cupcake_."

The Mandarin laughs, and laughs, and _laughs,_ poisonous and cruel in its mirth. " _I think that settles it. Are you satisfied, Captain?_ "

"Yeah." Steve grits his teeth, and those wet noises start again.  But that's all right, because he got Tony's message; it's not much, but even a small step in the right direction is better than standing still in a minefield.  

_"Excellent. I'm so glad you understand_."

From the back of the jet, Bruce's footsteps come padding up to the front. "Captain, I just got off the phone with-- what's wrong?"

For just that split second, there's a kind of frozen chaos in the cockpit. The pilot running the instruments, the Mandarin and the Captain having a terse conversation over the radio, and with the new voice coming into the space, the only one who isn't instantly silent is Tony, and the sound Tony is making is one that Bruce knows very, very well.

" _Oh, that's too perfect_." The Mandarin purrs, chuckling and then laughing, all the while those wretched noises continue unabated at that steady, sickening beat. " _Do you hear that, Tony? The good Captain has brought along Doctor Banner! My apologies, Doctor, I'd have him say hello, but his mouth is full."_

The radio connection dies instantly, but the damage is done. Bruce just stares at the speakers, then at Steve, his face drawing pale and ashen as his fingers clench around the fragile plastic of his phone. It cracks and splinters, and just a few drops of blood leak from the doctor's growing fist.  "Was that-- and he was making--"

Steve starts to respond, to tell him that it's all right, that they're going to get in there and save him, and everything's going to be fine. He even gets as far as ' _Bruce, it's_ \--' before it's too late, because the answer to Bruce's unfinished question is a plain, pale, sickened ' _yes_ ' on the Captain's face.  Bruce hunches, fists tearing into his hair and clawing at his shoulders as his body wrenches and swells, those big, soft brown eyes flaring bale-fire green. 

Steve grabs the Hulk-Out Bag off the floor and pats the pilot on the shoulder on his way to the back of the craft, shrugging on a parachute in great haste.  "Son, you need to eject from this aircraft _immediately_."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My sincerest apologies for the slow update speed for this chapter. Between health issues and issues of personal history, this chapter was very, very difficult to write. My current email is vinesilverlace@gmail.com if you need to have words.


	8. Chapter 8

 

 

Tony finds his first taste of freedom when the Mandarin is laughing too hard to keep his focus on his captive's mind. He throws himself back from the carved throne, rolls to his feet and wipes the back of his hand across his sopping mouth. Just outside that six feet range, Tony finally feels the claws of his resistance find purchase, dig in, hold fast; it's not much of a victory, but even a single grain of sugar is sweet on a starving tongue.

_Showtime, Stark. Get him talking._

"You're worse than Loki."

"Am I, now?" The Mandarin chuckles lightly. He's still hanging obscenely out of his pants.

"Oh, absolutely. See, the _worst thing_ you can do for yourself is to get us all focused on the same thing," Tony explains. To his credit, he keeps his voice steady, but he knows he's stalling, trying to hold onto this hard-won control as long as he can. "Loki didn't know any better. We didn't have a reputation then, but you? You really have no excuse."

The Mandarin sits up and straightens himself and his clothes, nonchalant as if he and Tony were still talking dimensional physics and he just needed to button his shirtsleeves. "It was a calculated risk, I admit, but the payoff is well worth it. Can you imagine what they must be thinking, now? The Captain, anyway, I doubt the Hulk spares much energy for deep thoughts."

"The legal term for what they're doing right now is " _premeditating_ ", Lo Pan. They're deciding exactly how to kill you as we speak."

The Mandarin leans his chin in his hand, looking up at Tony with dancing, dark eyes, that razor-perfect haircut laying prim on his chest. "Typically, you misunderstand. They're thinking only of _you_ , Tony. Every waking minute between now and the moment they arrive, you will be their world. They must be consumed with worry, not knowing what was happening to you."

Tony rolls his eyes. It feels good just to be able to do it, he doesn't care if he's being overly dramatic, and moreover it gives him a chance to scan the room for improvised weapons without obviously  skirting his gaze around. "They're smart, I'm sure they managed to puzzle _that_ out." He spits again, more for emphasis than disgust this time; there's nothing handy, so plan A just went out the window, and he hasn't formulated a B yet.

"Oh, of course they _knew_. But how do they imagine it? Because they _are_ imagining it, I promise you; in their mind's eye, do you kneel, or sit? Do I have a gun to your head? Are you drugged, are you bound? Are there others in the room, waiting their turn? An unanswered question will breed a thousand more, and the picture-- or a lack thereof-- is already worth thousand words." The older man offers Tony a lean, smug smile. "By the time they arrive, they'll be _blind_ with it; they'll rescue you, of course, after I've done what damage I plan on doing. And even as the lurid blanks fill themselves in, they'll never ask you how it really went, because that's not what polite and good men do."

Tony doesn't jump when the Mandarin stands up from the throne, although the adrenaline spike in his chest practically screams for it; he can feel the prickling at the back of his neck, the heat of shame and fear, but it isn't enough to pull his feet from where he's planted them on the floor.

The Mandarin smooths the front of his robes and takes an easy, languid stride toward the door, apparently heedless of the weight of Tony's staunch defiance. "And then," he continues, "weeks or months down the line, they'll see my handiwork. Perhaps by then I'll be ready to properly invade Hungary, and when your sensationalist news programs show the bodies of those brave, foolish souls who would rather die than live under my rule, they'll look down at their withered hands and see blood, knowing that this--" He gestures to the whole of Tony, half-naked, filthy, debauched, "-- _this_ , is the one they chose over the many. They will regret saving you, and eventually, they will regret caring enough to have wanted to save you in the first place. What hero can live with himself, knowing that his decision to save one pathetic wastrel of a man put so many others in shallow graves?"

"See, that's the funny thing about being an Avenger." Tony says. He straightens himself up, lets the words fountain in his mind, free and clear as wind and rain. "Graves aren't really stoplights for us, they're more like nitro boosts; we're a response team. We don't _start_ the fights. No one is going to blame anything you do on anyone _but_ you. Minus that jet, the only damage you've actually caused with that little stunt can be fixed with a change of clothes and a mouthful of Listerine." As he talks, he makes loose, emphatic gestures with relaxed fingers, paces in measured steps as if he's slowly weaving himself back together. It works, and the rising confidence in his words begins to darken the Mandarin's face.

"And on top of that? You just played the ace you had up your sleeve. Now SHIELD knows where you live, and I've seen where you sleep. Even if you choked the life out of me right here, right now, the only thing you'd have really done is removed the one reason they have not to turn this entire area code into a smoking crater. Just keep digging that hole deeper, Mandarin. You're in over your head, and the storm you've stirred up is going to drown you like the rat you are."

The older man is quiet for a few moments, watching Tony's face with the focus of an entemologist following a single ant through a mound. "I suppose we'll have to see," he muses. There's a biting chill in his voice, displeasure with this evident lack of fear plain in the very set of his bones; it's hard to say exactly what, if it's any one thing in particular, but something about Tony's words has gotten under his skin enough to sting. Another small victory. That makes two, now.

Tony smirks, because he _can_.

"As much as I've enjoyed our time together, Tony, you'll have to excuse me; I have guests I need to prepare for." The Mandarin lifts a hand, and although Tony tries to dive for cover, the gale-force blast of wind tosses him like a ragdoll into the far wall. Tony hears the sickening crack of his head and shoulder against the wood, and his world blooms into a warm, forgiving darkness.

 

  
\--

 

  
Steve hits the ground in a tumble, parachute disengaging with a few deft passes of his hand across the catches. The Hulk-Out Bag is clenched tightly in his fist, and otherwise he's none the worse for wear, but the quinjet's been splintered, he has no idea where the Hell the pilot got off to, and wherever the Hulk is, Steve can't hear his bellowing anymore.

The valley he lands in is thick with plant life and rock walls. In the distance, he can hear falling water, and the howl of high wind in the trees overhead. There's no sign of civilization in any direction, either, and once he squirms free of the parachute harness, Steve is effectively lost in the middle of Chinese Nowhere.

He takes a minute to check himself over for damages and, as usual, finds nothing, but that's all the good news he's got for himself. Satisfied, he checks the Hulk-Out Bag, and he's already wrist-deep in the thing when he realizes he's never actually looked to see what Bruce tends to pack in here. Right now, most of the room is taken up with the Mark V briefcase, but under it is a change of clothes, his glasses, a billfold with a few different currencies in it, and one last item that, just briefly, makes Steve's blood run cold.

A revolver. A graceless thing of battered, bitter silver, .38 special. Not exactly well-kept, to Steve's military eye, and if it had ever been a service weapon it hadn't been one in a long time, but none of that particularly mattered once he swings the cylinder out. It's almost fully loaded.

One chamber stares back at Steve like an empty eyesocket.

Steve swallows, and he can hear Bruce's voice in the back of his mind: _I put a bullet in my mouth, and the Other Guy spit it out._ He shakes it off. Under different circumstances he might have just put the thing in his belt and gone on about his business, a gun is a gun and he knows he's going into hostile territory, but the weight of it is cold, and ugly in his hand as he puts the revolver back at the bottom of the knapsack. That's a thought he doesn't need right now, either.

He tries the radio next, hoping for little, and when his faint hopes are answered, he sighs in relief and crosses himself in gratitude.

_"Cap? ... Cap, do you read? Steve--!"_

"I'm here, I'm fine, I read you." Steve closes his eyes, utterly grateful for a familiar voice on the team line.

" _We heard the Mandarin's transmission_." Clint's voice is emotionless and grim in a way that Steve's never heard before, the words edged in cold disgust and hate. It makes him think there's a story there, but not one he's willing to ask after. " _What's the plan?_ "

"Right now, your guess is as good as mine. I'd be out looking for Banner, but I can't stop the Hulk; it was an involuntary change." Steve closes his eyes, offers Bruce a silent apology. "Can you track him from where you are? And the pilot, for that matter?"

" _Pilot's ejected, he's got his own protocols to follow, so don't sweat it. According to our instruments, Hulk's only a few miles away from you, but you're in the buttcrack of some of the roughest mountains in Asia right now. The Hulk probably won't find anyone he can hurt out there, but if he gets going in any one direction you'd never catch him anyway._ " There's more of Natasha's brisk typing, and Clint adds, " _Looks like he's headed north, at any rate_."

"All right. Can SHIELD send a team out to pick Bruce up once he changes back?" Steve swallows a little. Clinically he knows that Bruce is a survivor, he can handle damned near anything, but he'd be in the middle of nowhere, completely away from civilization, unable to call for help, naked and surrounded by a lot of steep mountains and long, long ways to fall. The less Steve thinks about that, the better.

" _We'll contact Acquisitions. He'll get a ride home one way or another._ "

"Excellent. How far away is the Valley of Spirits?"

There's a brief moment of silence, as Natasha and Clint run through the obvious objections and their equally-obvious overrides, and she responds, " _Northwest. The subterranean scans aren't finished, but if you start walking now, you should be within sight-range by dark. We're going to call Fury and arrange to have you extracted. Do you think you can get back to the spot you're standing in now if we send a jet there?_ "

"I can do that, but be careful: I didn't see any anti-aircraft artillery, but that doesn't mean there won't be, and this guy may still have access to a lot of Stark tech." Steve takes a second to surmise what lies northwest, and finds he has to crane his neck up to see the sky. "It looks like I've got some climbing to do, but keep me posted, I'll be here." He smiles, just slightly, although they can't see him. "And thank you."

" _No problem, Cap. Give 'em Hell, we'll do what we can from here. Barton and Romanoff, out_."

The radio goes quiet, and Steve is alone.

He takes a deep breath, and begins what he expects will be a very long climb. It's a forgiving one, at least, full of handholds and strong, deep-rooted plants, and Steve starts to make his way upward.

The steep incline and the absurd distance don't bother him; most of the time the efficiency of his movements is so thoughtlessly automatic that he can just find a good rhythm and let himself enjoy being in his own body. Right now, his mind is occupied with thoughts of Tony and Bruce, and the wrongness of it all.

He takes a few seconds to hate himself, because of all the things he can blame on the Mandarin-- the crimes committed by the Ten Rings, Tony's kidnapping and subsequent humiliation, Bruce's involuntary Hulk-out-- the one he can't forgive is the one Tony had to clumsily obfuscate with an insult. He forced Tony Stark to beg for help.

Steve's been waiting for Tony to come around to teamwork and cooperation, and he's tried hard to be patient. What he had once taken for arrogance and selfishness, he gradually realized was rooted much more in mistrust; Tony just never had anyone to count on, and so he just did everything on his own. More than that, for him, ' _I need help_ ' is harder to say and costs more to admit than ' _I love you'_ , and that's why Steve kept that wish a secret: if Tony Stark ever had to ask for help, Steven Rogers wanted to be the first one to step up with an open hand outstretched, and prove to him that he isn't alone.

Well. He could stand being second, if Bruce beat him to it.

Now he digs his gloved fingers into the cliff face, hating the Mandarin a little more with every step for taking his well-intentioned wish and, in the most disgusting, most vile way, granting it. It might be that none of them will ever know it, never have the chance to appreciate how much the perversion of a simple wish might twist Captain America's insides.

But that doesn't matter now, not really. Steve wanted Tony to ask for help because he wanted to be able to answer in earnest, and now that Tony's done it, that's exactly what he plans to do.

 

\---

  
The first thing he hears is the singing of night birds, a thin-throated sound, delicate. Birds are a good sign; it means things have calmed down enough that they've returned to their perches. It seems to be echoing from somewhere above, far higher than even birds have any business being. The only wind is a chill draft from somewhere deep underground, rolling along the ground against Bruce's bare skin, damp and cool like the breath of the earth itself.

It smells clean down here, earth and stone and distant water. No blood, no bodies, no death. That makes two good signs in a row, and that tells Bruce it's okay to open his eyes.

It's dark, naturally; he seems to be at the bottom of another Hulk-shaped crater, which has since filled with a few inches of fresh water. Far up above him, the moon is pouring light down through a huge crack in the stone; seems the Other Guy must have broken through it somehow, leaving Bruce to have a nap in some kind of underground cavern.

There's no sign of the plane; Bruce is glad of that, at least, but there's no telling where he is, much less where Steve could be by now. When he takes stock of his situation, he realizes that he's lost, and that the loves of his life are missing, and he has no idea where they are, how to get to them, or if they're even alive, and considering the state Tony must have been in...

This is bad.

He gets to his feet like always, does his best to secure his pants around his waist in the effort to maintain something like modesty. When that doesn't work, he just takes the shredded fabric and wraps it around his feet, because he figures he's going to be in for a hell of a walk.

"Okay, Banner," he says to himself. "You're underground. Tony's in trouble. Steve's missing. You probably smashed your phone, your bag's gone, you probably wrecked the plane, and now you have no idea where you are in relation to anything else on the planet. What's your plan now, smart guy?"

He says it to himself, but it echoes, and the doppleganger doesn't have an answer either. Bruce looks up at the jagged shard of moonlight that cuts through the darkness above him, and then at the abyss just outside the edge of the crater he's standing in.

It's not really new to him, feeling like there ought to be a decision involved, a choice of directions, when there really isn't one to be had. Going up requires the ability to fly, or at least, to be able to free-climb up a cavern wall, cling to the underside of the ceiling and then climb up through the gap. Lacking that capacity, all he has is his own sense of smell, and that cool, earthen breath, rolling smoothly from the darkness over his own feet.

Bruce shakes his head, lifts one foot out of the water, and takes that first step toward something like progress.

  
\--

 

Steve doesn't make it to the peak until long after dark, but it doesn't matter. What he sees in the Valley of Spirits is a bright, glaring beacon, impossible to ignore.

The word that comes to mind is 'palace', though Steve's sensibilities don't really allow him to ascribe that kind of dignity to a place where someone he loves is being held. He's seen castles before, grandiose stone things with towering spires and oppressive Germanic stature. This is a different flavor of elegance, rooted deep into the stone as if it wasn't constructed as much as erected on the bones of something sleeping on the valley floor.

"Romanoff? Barton? Do you read?"

" _We're here, Cap. You okay?_ " Clint's voice answers immediately.

"Yeah. I think I'm seeing it. How are those scans coming?"

" _Completed. The building goes about two hundred feet below ground level and it connects to a cave network; there's also a bunch of man-made channels, probably drawing water from an underground source somewhere._ "

"I don't suppose you've picked one out to get me in there?"

" _What, you think we've been sitting around with our thumbs up our butts, Cap?_ " Clint snickers. "T _hirty yards at your 2 o'clock, about forty-five feet down, there's a duct that goes straight into the building. It's probably for drainage, so this late in the season it should be bone dry. It'll take you right to the center, but you'll probably need to bust out of whatever pipe they've got in there._ "

"Good." Steve takes a breath and makes his way downward, still carrying the Hulk-Out Bag. The Mark V is still in it; as long as he's got it and his C3 charges, he figures he'll be fine. "I don't suppose you have a way to tell me where Tony is in that sideshow?"

" _Sorry, Captain. We've been able to track the underground networks but this guy's been off SHIELD's grid for years. Whatever countermeasures he's got against our surveillance are pretty sophisticated_ ," Natasha's frown is clear in her tone, even through the continued clicking of keys as she types. " _The best we can do is satellite images, but that doesn't give us much_."

"Does that mean we can call in an air strike? I'd be happy to pull Tony out of there and have Fury serve this son of a bitch a tall glass of napalm from on high."

" _That's... a big maybe_ ," Clint sounds just slightly disappointed, as if he wishes he'd thought of it first. " _If you can find out what he's using to keep that area in our blind spot, destroy it. The way it stands now, our guidance systems would be useless, we'd have better luck trying to bury the thing under a rockslide. Whatever the Mandarin is using down there is causing some kind of crazy-nasty interference, I'm guessing that's why Stark couldn't summon the suit_."

"Right. Does that mean I'm going to lose you once I'm inside?"

" _Probably_."

"Damn. All right, well." Steve climbs down a few more feet, and finds the duct. It's old, the grating rusty and filthy, and the stench coming from the pipeline behind it is thick with mold and stagant water. He's been through worse, he's sure, it's just been awhile since he had to think about it. "I've found the entry point. I'll get back in touch as soon as possible, hopefully with Iron Man in tow."

" _Good luck, Captain."_

 _"Kick his ass, Cap._ "

"Will do. Rogers, out."

 


	9. Chapter 9

 

Bruce is accustomed to walking in unfamiliar places. The darkness is thick and the air is cool, and despite the foreboding nature of his situation, there's an oddly natural peace about the twisting passage of the cave. He leaves the moonlight behind him almost immediately, and before long, he's forced to feel his way through, crouching, fingers and toes outstretched to grasp water-smooth stone and soft, cold soil.

Having just reverted back from the Hulk, this lends Bruce a deep feeling, as if he's touching some long-distant ancestor's memory that's been swimming aimless and forgotten in his blood until now. It's almost bizarre; his idea of family is poisoned with violence and cruelty, but this is different, somehow pure, calling that part of him back to a time where crawling naked into the darkness of a cave was the first step towards home.

It's a comforting thought, and he clings to it as he goes.

His eyes are useless so he shuts them; his ears and nose focus sharply, listening for echoes and smells to tell him what's there and how far. His fingers brush over stone and earth, note changes in depth and height, find clear paths for his feet. Something small and six-legged and carapaced skitters over his knuckles; he stays still and lets it pass like the harmless creature it is.

Bruce feels his lungs slowly fill and empty with calming breaths as he walks and climbs, hours and hours along. He can feel the Hulk just under the surface, but where Bruce is touching something ancient and deep, the Hulk is smoldering with childish adventure: the inherent anger is aggravated by the wish to go home, to be somewhere safe and light and warm again, but mollified by knowing that home is further up, further in.

Somewhere, deep underground, Bruce Banner and the Hulk occupy a shared space within their skin, and just for now, maybe only this once, there's room enough for both.

  
\--

  
Steve's walk is quicker but convoluted, twisting in and on and around itself as the drainage channel makes its way through the valley, under the palace, around to all of its major pathways. The water is barely ankle-deep and makes obnoxiously loud, echoing splashing noises with his footsteps, but Steve is beyond caring; his mind keeps going back to that video feed, and Tony's bleary civilian eyes.

It's different now, he knows that, but he can't shake that image. Tony may have proven himself a hero, but he's right when he says he's not a soldier: he has no serial number, no name and rank to repeat, no protocol to fall back on. Whatever he's doing, whatever's being done to him now, is not something he's been prepared for, and every time Steve reminds himself of that fact he just picks up the pace again.

Eventually, he starts hearing the muffled sounds of a building full of people: the low thrumming of machines, the electric whine of television sets, the sounds of feet on flights of stairs, the thunking of water in distant pipes. None of it sounds as industrial as he would have originally guessed, and nothing as sophisticated as the Tower's ambient noise, but he can count that as a blessing. Steve can handle technology that is less than cutting-edge.

When he starts hearing voices in the spaces above him, he slows down, slides his feet through the shallow water instead of lifting them high enough to splash. Girls' voices, and kitchen sounds: cutlery on wood, the popping and hissing of something in a pan. The sharp noises cut through the darkness, and Steve takes a minute to get his bearings and estimate a bit of distance.

He doesn't speak a word of any form of Chinese, but as luck would have it, a group of girls gossipping about Tony Stark sounds the same in any language. Steve picks Tony's name out of the bubbling hodgepodge of foreign syllables, and figures he must be close to the right place-- or at least close enough to have a reasonable chance of getting to wherever the right place actually is, and so he chooses a spot a few yards down the channel to place a charge.

The pipe bursts with a noisy, foundation-shaking pop, and immediately the kitchen girls start panicking. Apparently they're sensible enough to react quickly, and within a few seconds, the room above Steve's head is silent.

He breaks through the floor with a few strikes of the shield against the thin cut-stone tile and climbs on out.

The kitchen is cavernously huge, the food on the stove left unattended as the staff apparently fled. A quick glance around tells Steve there's enough food stored here to feed an army, but none of it seems the kind of thing one feeds soldiers: shelves dedicated to ingredients for baking pastries, an entire wall of spices and seasonings, even an impressive array of different types of chocolate stored in its own basket. Aside from the huge quantities, it's not that different from the pantry back at the Tower.

But Steve doesn't have time for that now; if the kichen girls fled, whatever security there is to be had in this place is probably on its way.

  
\--

  
Consciousness finds Tony curled up in a ball on the Mandarin's huge, sprawling bed. His shoulder throbs and aches, wrenched but fortunately not dislocated. He starts to sit up, but that revolting touch of fingertips combs through his hair again, a degenerate parody of a gesture that should have been soothing.

"Ah, don't get up. I didn't mean to wake you." The oily voice above him turns Tony's stomach. Amusement drips from the Mandarin's tongue like grease. "Your dear Captain really has the worst timing. I had just ordered my dear ones to prepare you a nice dinner when he arrived. Now they're all safely hidden away, so that I can deal with him myself. Poor girls, they were really very excited to meet you; it seems there's a rumor going around that I mean to have you join their ranks."

Tony finds himself able to talk, so he does. Unfortunately he doesn't seem to be able to move any better than he did before; that thought-pressure blocks his brain from controlling his limbs. "...Captain America isn't really into harming innocent bystanders. You're not even going to use your girls as human shields?"

"You'd like very much to find me uncouth, wouldn't you, Tony?" The Mandarin chuckles. "No. I want to be able to give him all my attention, and all the freedom he needs to fight me at his best. That way he'll accept it more quickly when he realizes he can't defeat me."

The older man pats Tony's hair again as he stands. "Don't worry, Tony. It won't be much longer." Another gale-force wind blasts Tony back into the wall, and the Mandarin lets himself out of the room without any further niceties.

Whether because the Mandarin was too sloppy to make sure being thrown against the wall again didn't knock him out, or because Tony is simply fed up with that particular combination of parlor tricks, he manages to stagger to his feet, conscious and angry and utterly free of mind control. This is his best chance to make an escape, and if Steve is really here, there's a chance they can rendezvous and get the Hell out of here together.

The servants' doors are all locked-- magnetic, he thinks, which would work to his advantage if he had any damned _tools_ \-- and he doesn't dare slip out the door that the Mandarin just left through. Tony frets around the room, looking for anything he can improvise into usefulness, and finds nothing--

\--until his eyes land on the grand windows in front of the Mandarin's throne, and the throne itself, and the yards and yards of fine silk that are currently adorning that huge, overly decadent bed.

"...Steve, I hope you kick this guy's ass extra hard for making me resort to this Rapunzel-style bullshit," Tony mutters. He goes to the window frame and starts investigating the best way to break through the glass.

  
\--

 

Steve finds that the hallways yield nothing, and they're almost worse than the pipes: he rounds corners, climbs flights of stairs, but it's as if the entire building's been evacuated. There are signs of life here and there-- brooms and mops left leaning against walls, empty laundry baskets abandoned in corners, tools sitting out unattended-- but all of it neglected, as though the people using these things had all vanished, and still, no one has come to stop Steve from having his run of the place. It's starting to get creepy.

He finds a grand staircase, this one huge and carpeted in red and gold, and tightens his grip on his shield. It's too big, too wide for even the pretense of stealth, and there's a weight to the air that Steve is sure means that the upper floor has definitely not been abandoned.

Captain America takes one last deep breath, and marches on.

  
\--

 

Bruce's peaceful journey comes to a somewhat abrupt end when he sees light at the end of the tunnel: not daylight, and not firelight, but something strange and jewel-blue reflecting from a curve in the stone and earth.

As he approaches it, Bruce finds the ground under his feet becoming smooth and chilled, unnaturally so. Having walked for so long in the dark, entranced by the strange balance that being comfortably in tune with the Hulk and relieved of the burden of normal vision, the metal-- yes, it's metal-- that greets his toes is a welcome and curious change, the science of it teasing his sense of wonder.

He has no idea where Tony and Steve could be, but this might almost make up for it. That's the way of things for Bruce, most of the time; the Hulk is too dangerous to be let free under normal circumstances, and he best he can do is to wait at home with the first aid kit and warm, careful hands. This is new and different, and whatever it is, it might be useful in getting them all home again.

Right about now, Bruce would give just about anything for that.

The bend in the passageway takes him through a corridor of twisted, wrecked metal, dimly lit by more jewel-blue light that seems to be coming from tiny star-like power cells in the walls. There's a heavy presence all around, one that aggravates the Hulk and makes Bruce feel small and humbled, as if he's suddenly a child again, waiting to hear a story that the teller swears really happened.

As he comes into the center of the mass, Bruce's gaze falls on a pillar that seems to be overgrown with gigantic shards of broken crystals, dull and lifeless as though they had been as bright as those little blue stars in the walls, once upon a time. But now they're cracked, splintered, with pieces obviously missing, and little indentations on the top of the pillar that indicate whatever used to hold them in place is gone now, too.

He can't identify the minerals, but something about this place reminds him of the helicarrier and he can't quite put his finger on it. But he knows he's on to something, and whatever it is, is terribly important. So Bruce kneels in front of the center pillar-- the console?-- and begins to investigate, feeling as if he's not quite alone in this passage, and not just because of the Hulk.

  
\--

  
The grand staircase opens onto a soaring audience hall, immaculate and adorned in red and gold, every inch befitting a palace built as a monument to the majesty of a bygone era. Steve's footsteps echo on the smooth marble floor, his pace rhythmic and steady as a man walking those last few yards to the gallows. A second staircase at the back of the chamber rises up to the highest floor of the palace, and a pair of magnificent doors at the top.

"Captain America! How good to finally meet you face to face."

The man descending the upper staircase lets a smile cross his features; a handsome, older gentleman with a despicable countenance, he folds his hands as he walks, looking down at Steve with such contempt in his eyes it might as well be leaking from his face like tears.

But Steve isn't paying attention to the man's face. He knows that voice.

"Cut the bullshit, Mandarin. Where is Tony Stark?"

"Safe," comes the reply. "But he's occupied for the moment. You see, you and I a--"

Steve doesn't wait; whatever the Mandarin has to say is nothing he cares to hear, and he hurls the shield directly into the older man's face-- only for the Mandarin to hold up a hand, and the shield halts in midair, and then clatters to the ground with a harmonic metal ringing sound.

Captain America's fist connects with his face just as he starts to voice his amusement, and so Steven Rogers draws first blood.

Banter falls by the wayside as Captain America lays into the Mandarin with all his strength; the Mandarin is nowhere near as skilled in hand-to-hand combat, but he's fast-- supernaturally fast, as if time around him has somehow doubled, and before long Steve is ducking and dodging more often than he is striking. But while he slips away from the Mandarin's attacks again and again, he notices the glimmer of a gem on one of the Mandarin's rings, how it flares a little brighter when he seems to move like something out of a nightmare.

He feints left and connects with a right hook; the Mandarin spits blood and holds a hand out. Steve sees the opportunity and reaches out to snatch the ring right off the bastard's hand-- and he pulls back a hand covered in a sheet of ice.

The Mandarin says something, but Steve can't hear it; all he can feels is the sudden bitter cold, and he can't feel his fingertips as the ice begins to crawl up his wrist, to his elbow, up over his bicep.

He shivers, but not from the cold; suddenly his vision is swimming and all he can hear is the whine of the Valkyrie's engine, the static over the radio,

_I've got to put 'er in the water there's still time it's going too fas a lot of people are gonna die we'll have the band play something slow Steve-- Steve--_

Reality comes crashing in on him far too late, and Steve hits the floor so hard he can feel his shoulder wrench nearly out of its socket; the ice sheath around his arm shatters into bits, but he's still so cold, and he can't move, he can't move, still frozen. Somewhere, distantly, he can hear the sound of shattering glass.

The Mandarin hauls him up by the very star on his chest, and he can feel a wall of pressure closing in on his mind. "You've done so well," he says, smoothly, calmly, as if he's trying to calm a frightened child. "But I'm afraid you're just a pawn in this game. It's nothing personal, I assure you; you've fought bravely. Valiantly, even. Tony Stark is so very lucky to have you, but I'm afraid I just can't let him keep you. In the end, you're just too good for him, Captain."

He hears the words and he tries to struggle, but now it's as if Steve can't even reach his own body through that psychic bulwark pressing against his thoughts. All at once, his body wrenches on itself, as if every fiber of every muscle is being squeezed, pressed in a vise. He can't fight, can't flail, and when he finally manages to get enough air into his lungs to scream he knows, he knows it's only because the Mandarin is allowing him that small measure of kindness. Steve trembles and screams, his breath quaking in his throat, the pain so intense, so excruciating as it burns through every inch of his body that he can't even cry, and then his stomach is full, his mouth is full--

A bright blue liquid pours out of his mouth and onto the floor, splattering like bile against the marble.

The serum.

The Mandarin tosses him aside, cackling like a mad man, and he flies as if he were made of paper and clatters to the ground like a sack of wooden flinders; Steve feels his formerly skin-tight uniform sag and bunch at the joints, his lungs suddenly tight and constricted, his body lighter than air but not strong enough to move itself.

He goes down. He stays there.

  
\--

 

Bruce finally realizes what about this place reminds him of the helicarrier.

The pillar is the command post; the consoles that ought to make up the rest of the chamber have long-since deteriorated, but the great panels in the round chamber should have been analogous to the helicarrier's huge windshields. The metal, buried under the earth, powered by bizarre, glowing-blue gems that seem almost like non-radioactive, miniature Tesseracts, maybe even the same material that comprises Tony's Arc Reactor core?

It's so perfect, he thinks. It's some kind of alien aircraft. SHIELD will flip their collective lids over this.

Just as he's about to have a good laugh over it, the story comes rushing back to Bruce's memory: a silver ship with jeweled sails. A silver ship, with jeweled sails, left forgotten at the bottom of the Valley of Spirits; a forgotten alien aircraft, crashed here centuries ago, robbed of its power source by some greedy, virtueless human, left buried in the earth while the fading presence of its crew clings hopelessly to the wreckage.

A hundred thoughts crash over Bruce at once, and it may be that not all of them are his own, but the only one that matters is the one that clicks first: _they're right on top of this thing._

He takes a deep breath, and this time, he revels in the sudden shifting and swelling of his own muscles, until his shoulders are pushing up against the ceiling's wreckage. The Hulk looks up into the darkness he's been hating all night.

He puts both fists upward, and jumps as hard as he can.

  
\--

  
Somewhere, distantly, Steve can hear the sound of a door bursting open, someone shouting. But his ears are full of his own pulse, washing in and out; the weight of the Hulk-Out bag on his back is weighing him down, and he can barely think.

He feels a hand haul him up; the Mandarin turns him, forcing Steve to look at him.

The older man talks, gloats-- but all Steve cares about is the fact that he can see Tony, covered in blood, staggering toward him from a doorway somewhere in the back of the chamber. He's hurt, but he's alive, and the Mandarin is still talking. Something about being deprived of his greatness, of being useless, and easily forgotten, being a burden--

It's all stuff Steve has heard before; he doesn't care. The Mandarin lifts him easily, holding him up as if to show Tony-- _look what I've done, look what I've reduced him to_!-- but Steve and Tony share exhausted, bloodied smiles.

Steve slips a hand deftly into his belt for his last C3 charge, arms it, and smoothly drops it down the back of the Mandarin's decadent, many-layered, silken robe. He smiles, exhausted, as Tony throws himself bodily into Steve to tear him out of the Mandarin's grasp; they tumble, they roll in a clumsy knot of knobby stick-thin limbs and skin cut to ribbons by broken glass. The Mandarin adds a second insult to injury as another one of those damn blasts of wind howls through the air and blasts them back further into the wall.

The Mandarin is too busy gloating to feel the bomb trapped just above the sash around his waist, and by the time he notices, he's already scrambling for what to do about the enormous green rage monster that has just come bursting up through the floor.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is such a chaotic mess orz I know that was the point and all but please forgive me for this huge mess orz I promise it'll get better after this


	10. Chapter 10

 

The floor cracks, buckles, and then bursts open, speared through by two gigantic fists. The Hulk doesn't bother searching for Iron Man or Star Man or anything; his eyes land on the tall, dark-haired man, and an intense, familiar stench fills his nose. It's a smell he remembers, from the before time, when he was still small enough to fit inside Bruce. It's been a long time since then, but the Hulk remembers the smell of greed and arrogant disdain, of hate, of violence, even mixed with something strange and perverse the way it is now, and it brings back the memories of those bitter years in a red-tinged fog.

For only a bare space of heartbeats, the Hulk just _stares_ , his pupils narrowed to the size of a grain of sand; the Mandarin meets the gaze, realizes he's wasting valuable time, and begins tugging his robe off over his head rather than try to fuss with the seemingly endless row of frog closures down its front.

The collar is too tight.

The charge detonates; the explosion rocks blows the Mandarin forward into the Hulk's chest. His body begins to seal back in on itself, held together only by the power of the rings: molecules of flesh and bone stitching themselves back together, plucked out of the air where they've been blown off. He shrieks in pain, blood pouring from his throat.

The Hulk, finding this noisy thing that exudes the reek of his first memory suddenly barrelling into him, takes a long, deep breath of it and roars. He grabs the Mandarin's stiffened body and flings him into a pillar, leaving the older man to curl into a ball and focus on stitching himself back together one molecule at a time.

The shape of it, a body injured and bent inward, calls more memories up; Bruce had done that, in the before time. Curled inward, holding his hands over his head, holding his breath and waiting for it to stop; the Hulk had watched from inside Bruce's skin. Somehow, it makes him even angrier, seeing this figure taking that posture as if he didn't deserve this, as if he wasn't full of hate and loathing and selfish greed, as if he hadn't hurt Tony and Steve. The Hulk pounds his fists into the floor and feels a little better when the marble crumbles, and he dives forward, howling his rage at the top of his lungs.

The Mandarin holds up both hands, and one of his rings-- the one that makes the blood drain out of Tony's face, makes the Arc Reactor flicker as if it's blown a fuse-- flares brightly, casting sudden shadows between them. "Doctor Banner," he commands, his voice hoarse and dry with pain, " _Calm down_."

The Hulk shrinks mid-stride as the mind control takes effect; Bruce is back before he skids to a halt on the smooth, polished section of unbroken floor, ending in a heap at the Mandarin's slippered feet. He doesn't move; his face is tranquil, his body relaxed, perfectly at peace. He lands facing Steve and Tony's direction; his expression sours both their stomachs, because that face only belongs in the safety of home, in the protection of loving arms, not staring sightlessly amid the wreckage of a battle he never should have had to fight.

The Mandarin slowly gets to his feet, and then begins to applaud, laughing; the tattered, burnt remains of his robe hang from his shoulders, his wounds unnaturally frayed from their half-done reconstruction. He limps as he takes a few steps away from Bruce's prone form, and lightly steps over the Hulk-Out bag from where it fell, Steve's newly-shrunken body having slipped out of it. His body bulges unnaturally in places where the matter-rearrangement didn't take, places where bones are misaligned and organs are forced out of their rightful place.

"Oh, Tony, this is marvelous," he praises. His joyless grin doesn't reach his eyes. A normal man would be dead, but somehow, the Mandarin manages to walk with his head high, leaving a trail of blood and soot and bits of masonry in his wake. When he speaks, it's a little too loud, as if he's trying to talk over the ringing in his ears. "For a moment, I was actually afraid your dear ones would succeed! I admit I am quite impressed. I'm almost sad to have to kill them, but you've done much, much more damage to my home than I initially expected."

"Kill them?" Tony coughs and stands up, putting himself between the Mandarin and Steve while the ex-super soldier gets to his feet. "I thought your plan was to ruin them. You know, force me to evolve, and all that?"

"And I've done that, haven't I?" The Mandarin takes another step. "Your super-soldier is a waif, your berserk monster is peaceful as a sleeping kitten; when I've recovered, I'll lock him into that shape and he'll never become the Hulk again. They are the products of science; they can be remade, and until they are, they are easily replaced. If I recall correctly, their deaths would open up spots on your little hero team for Colonel James Rhodes and Emil Blonsky-- a good-hearted soldier, and a gamma monster. The world will keep spinning when they are in whatever shallow grave I decide to dump the Captain and the Doctor in. Assuming there's anything left to bury, anyway, there might not be." He half-smiles, and it's sinister and perversely dishonest, as if he already knows exactly what he plans to do with their remains and is simply refraining.

Tony snarls and guides Steve a step back closer to the wall, ever cautious of the range of that mind-control ability. "You really think that's how it's going to work?"

Steve looks to the Mandarin, then behind him, and then takes a few steps to his right, putting some distance between himself and Tony without moving forward. "What's that supposed to accomplish, exactly? The Avengers were never assigned to deal with you. SHIELD didn't even know who you are. Our purpose is to deal with threats from other worlds, attacking us only leaves the planet you live on more vulnerable. Are you really ready for the responsibility of protecting Earth in our absence? Because without someone to stop them, they'll come knocking on your door, sooner or later."

"That's true." The Mandarin chuckles. "It's good to see the serum isn't responsible for your intelligence, my good Captain. However, you'll have to understand that I am not overly afraid of extraterrestrials. I am quite fond of the ones who so graciously left these gems for me to find; even so, I am clearly capable of taking on the three of you at once; clearly whatever alien threat might come to our fair planet has more to fear of me than I of them."

Tony swallows, and casts his eyes to Steve's; they share a tense look between them, and then Tony takes a few nervous, fidgeting steps to his left, gesticulating lightly. The movements fling smears of blood onto the floor, leaking from the hundreds of slices all over his body. "Is that why you're into science fiction, "Zhang"? Because some aliens abducted you and gave you jewelry? Did they give you the anal probe first, or did they pay you up front?"

The Mandarin laughs, and as he talks, one of his rings begins to glow. Steve's boots begin to unravel, and when they're exposed, the skin of his toes begins to come undone, scattering away like grains of sand in the wind; Steve just stands perfectly still, even when he starts to bleed, and that seems to make the Mandarin laugh harder. "The Makluans only left me these rings and the bones of their unfortunate prince to study," he explains. "But some day-- when all that matters in the world belongs to me and the planet is sheltered under the metal wings of an Iron Man fighting in the memory of his dead lovers, I--"

A deafening _bang_ fills the room, and the Mandarin's chest sprays blood. Four more gunshots follow the first, each one punching through the man's body and sinking into the wall behind Steve and Tony, neatly grouped in the space between them. The Mandarin falls forward, stinking and burnt, a thick pool of rapidly-cooling red spreading on the broken marble around him like a blot of ink on sandpaper.

Standing behind him, calm as a glass lake, naked and unharmed, is Bruce Banner, holding his empty revolver. The mind control apparently wears off, and he falls to his knees, eyes widened; the Hulk is responsible for countless deaths, but Bruce Banner, to his knowledge, has never killed a man before. The tense silence remains until the light of gems in the rings dulls, dark and lifeless, wrapped around ten cold fingers.

Steve looks between Tony, half-dressed and pale with blood loss, bruised and beaten, still foul with the leavings of the Mandarin's abuse, and Bruce, naked and splattered with blood that isn't his, cradling an empty, smoking gun. He bends down, collects his shield-- and winces, because even at a third the weight of steel, it's still a little heavy for him-- and the Hulk-Out bag, which he hefts in both hands, and slides over to Tony.

"The Mark V is in there," he says, and Tony and Bruce both smile, just a little, because even if he's back to being a ninety-pound weakling with asthma, that's still the Captain America Voice. "And the first aid kit. We have a rendezvous point, a few miles southeast of here. We should get moving."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the short chapter, folks.


	11. Chapter 11

 

Bruce patches everyone up to the best of his ability, leaving Tony a mess of gauze and tape and Steve somewhat damp with disinfectant; neither of them comment on the way his hands are shaking as he works.

"We can't really leave the body like this," Tony points out. "The rings, at least, belong--"

"In the basement," Bruce interrupts. "That-- that stuff he was saying about Makluans, and aliens? He built this place over the wreckage of a crashed spaceship, the jewels in the rings were part of it, somehow." He points to the floor, and the tunnel the Hulk bore through it. "That's how I got here, there's a cave network, and the building was constructed right on top of it."

"So, what? Do we put them back there, then?" Tony peers into the gigantic hole in the floor left in the Hulk's wake; the crumbling edges of the marble tiles scatter down into darkness. He doesn't hear them hit the bottom.

"No." Steve goes to bend down and take the rings off of the Mandarin's cold hands; he's never been a fan of looting corpses, but scavenging weapons is old hat. "These are the rightful property of an alien civilization, which means they go into the SHIELD security vault in case a member of that civilization comes looking for them. They're way too powerful to leave lying around. The next guy might not be as much of a homebody as this one was."

Bruce manages a morose chuckle, wringing his hands as he watches Steve fuss with the Mandarin's. "I can't tell if he was lazy or smart."

"How so?" Steve twists the last of the rings off and puts all ten of them in a belt pouch; the light in the gems, removed from their dead host, disappears from the stones completely and leaves them just ordinary pieces of some otherworldly minerals, humming with potential.

"Look at all this." Bruce gestures to the building, to the damage they've caused. He goes over to the splatter of blue fluid on the tile, and pulls out a piece of sterilized gauze to mop it up; it's probably contaminated, but it's better than nothing. "What was he doing at the head of a terrorist organization?"

"World conquest," Tony puts in. He doesn't look away from the floor just yet. "He talked about invading Hungary, having some kind of clash of empires once he built his up."

Steve stands up again once he's certain the rings are secure. "Did he tell you why he kidnapped you?"

"The same shit as always," Tony mutters, and doesn't elaborate even when two pairs of questioning eyes are turned on him. "But that's not important now. He had servants, his 'dear ones'. With the size of this place, probably lots of them."

"He said they're hidden, probably in a panic room or something. With the noise died down, they'll probably be along shortly."

Tony gives it some thought, then shakes his head. "No. He would have told them to wait for his signal; they'll probably come looking once they start getting hungry."

Steve looks to Tony. "How can you tell?"

"...He and I shared a certain predilection." Tony swallows, keeps his eyes forward, not focusing on anything. "We just go about it in different ways; he was the type who liked to break his dear ones, that's all."

Bruce watches Steve, watches the blood slowly thicken around his sagging boots, watches the pulped mess of the Mandarin's back occasionally burble with air escaping from within the cold meat of his chest. He's not sure Steve understands what Tony means, but Bruce certainly does, and the thought makes his heart feel like a lump of ice in his chest. "Think they'll be all right, with him gone?"

"There's enough gold in this building to keep them fed for the rest of their lives," Steve answers smoothly. "If they don't tell anyone and just keep the house for themselves, they'll live like princesses." He doesn't notice Tony look a bit sickened by his phrasing.

"Will their culture let them do that? If he called them-- if they're his dear ones, then he must have cared about them, right? If they..." Bruce takes a shaking breath and stuffs the first aid kit back in his bag, turning away from the corpse and digging the heels of his palms into his forehead. "Jesus fucking Christ..."

Steve stands up and goes to his side, Tony close on his heels, and his heart sinks a little when he realizes he has to look up to meet Bruce's eyes. "Hey. You were acting in our defense, and you probably saved both our lives."

"And he had you under mind control," Tony adds. "It just backfired on him, that's all."

"No. I was completely lucid, Tony, I--"

"It's subtle. I know, he used it on me all the time." He rests a hand on Bruce's shoulder, solid and grounding. "It doesn't change who you are, it just-- puts up this wall, between your brain and your body, gives him space to just create thoughts and then the rest of you just does what he wants, as if those thoughts were your own. He got a lot of information out of me that way. All he did was tell you to calm down, to negate your emotions and stop the Hulk. It sounds sick, because it is, but he made you into a psychopath."

"And without emotions, you still came to our rescue." Steve smiles, and there's an apologetic warmth in it, because he can't bring himself to say he's sorry that Bruce loves them enough to kill to protect them, even when he can't feel love in the first place. "You're not a murderer, Bruce; he signed that death sentence himself."

"...I've never killed anyone before. I mean, the Hulk, sure, but I've never... I wouldn't, I can't--" Bruce laughs humorlessly, swallows once, like he's not sure whether to laugh or cry. "This must look ridiculous to you, you fought Nazis and terrorists."

"That's not ridiculous at all, Bruce." Steve reaches for his other shoulder, and has to reach up a bit to do it; his fingers are too thin, too cool through Bruce's shirt. "This is a unique case, of course, but you shouldn't fret over it when killing a man bothers you; fret over it when you _don't_ feel anything."

Tony doesn't comment on that part, perhaps conspiciously silent for a second or two, before he just pulls Bruce and Steve to his bandaged chest and hold them both as tight as he can. It's so unlike what he remembers, feels so alien and wrong, that for just a second, he wants to scream and take the rings and raise the Mandarin from the dead just so he can strangle him to a second death.

There was never any doubt in Tony's mind that the Mandarin was only going to get his ass handed to him, one way or another, whether it meant Tony would have to break himself out, or one of his superhero friends would come and rescue him, or avenge him, if it came to that. But the Mandarin's plan was never to kill him, it was only to hurt his lovers, to scar them in such a way that it would spur Tony to act.

Tony looks between the three of them now: Steve, thin and pale, his skintight uniform sagging with the star hanging lopsidedly over his stomach; Bruce, with trembling hands and watery eyes, afraid he's become a monster on the outside too; and Tony himself, his body healing the wounds he'd gotten in the escape, his mind already scrambling for a way to fix it and make it right.

Posthumously or not, the Mandarin had been true to his word.

He lets go before the warmth and weight of them has time to feel comfortable, looks the corpse over once more, and then puts that thought of his mind. "Leave him for his servants. They'll mourn and dispose of him one way or another; as far as we're concerned, this is over and done with. If one of them wants to tag me back for it, they can go ahead and try, I'll deal with it then. You said there's a rendezvous point, Steve?"

"Yeah, a few miles off, up over the mountain. We should probably raid the kitchen first...it'll be a longer trip going up than coming down." He tries to act like that thought doesn't sting him, but the way his expression dims gives him away. Half of his climb down into the valley had been done in jumps and tumbles that he just isn't capable of anymore; the climb up... he might not be capable of it at all.

Bruce looks to Tony. "You can't fly us out with the suit?"

"The Mark V is for emergencies only. It can fly, but it doesn't have repulsors in the greaves, so the thrust capacity is less than twenty percent standard; it can't lift much and get more than a few feet off the ground." Tony frowns. "Looks like we're in for a walk. Which way's the kitchen?"

  
\--

  
The kitchen, having been left unattended since Steve breached the building, is a bit of a mess. Pots and pans boiling over, the food in them burning to charcoal or melting down to mush, spilling onto the floor. There's a brief debate over whether or not to leave it all the way it is and just hope the God-forsaken place burns to the ground, but that gets nixed in favor of sparing the servants any more trouble. Bruce's backpack, emptied of most of its contents, gets refilled with whatever won't leak or spoil and can be eaten raw.

"This sort of takes me back," Steve mentions, sounding a little surprised as he pulls open a cupboard full of tall ceramic bottles, decorated with hand-painted flowers, and labeled in a language he can't read.

"You don't strike me as the looting type," Bruce muses. "I don't suppose you know of any secret caches of lost Nazi paintings?"

He half expects an indignant 'no', but Steve just smiles with that soft, somber nostalgia he gets when he thinks back to the Invaders. "It wasn't like that, we never took valuables, just food. We did a lot of walking and we couldn't always carry enough rations to get everybody home on a full stomach." He takes a whiff of one of the bottles, and when the smell makes his eyes roll back, he passes it to Tony. "That's for you. I dunno what it is, but I figure this guy probably owes you a drink. I think it might be--"

Tony plucks it out of Steve's fingers, and before Steve can scold him for taking stuff out of people's hands, he all but dumps the contents into his mouth. For a few seconds, the fumes are so thick Steve has to back off.

Bruce's eyes widen and he takes a step toward him to stop him, "Tony-- Tony, that's probably rice wine, you shouldn't--"

Tony holds up a finger to stop him, swishes his mouthful, gargles, and then spits it gracelessly into the kitchen sink. Then he smacks his lips. "...Nope, rambutan wine, probably mixed with something stronger."

"Fine time for a wine-tasting." Bruce raises an eyebrow.

"Just needed to rinse my mouth out. Funny thing about getting kidnapped, you don't really have time to pack a toothbrush." Tony stares a bit at the rest of the bottle, and then dumps the rest out. He ignores the horrified expressions he knows are aimed in his direction for the moment, and just watches his mouthful of wine run down into the drain. "Look, I know you both heard it over the radio. It was disgusting, but I'm not hurt. Believe me, I have consented to worse and the mind control meant he didn't need any kind of physical force; it was more of a show for the two of you than anything else. I didn't--" He bites the words off before he can say them, shakes his head. "The point is, he wasn't doing it to me, he was doing it to you."

"What, did he think triggering the Hulk was going to stop us from getting to you? That seems a little... ignorant," Bruce takes a few careful steps to Tony's side, careful not to intrude on his line of sight.

"And you were able to get your message out," Steve agrees. "He should've known better than to let you talk."

Tony shakes his head. "Steve, you're not hearing me, it was mind control. You were never talking to me, it was just him using me like a sock puppet. Whatever message you heard, it wasn't mine."

"...That doesn't make much sense, why would he make you ask for help? He couldn't possibly have thought we would just leave you there."

Tony doesn't answer, and Bruce reaches a hesitant hand for his shoulder. "... _You_ didn't think that, did you, Tony?"

"No." Tony reaches for Bruce's wrist, lifts his hand to his lips and lays a kiss in the middle of Bruce's palm. "No. Never. But I didn't want you to come after me, either, because he knew he could squeeze the Serum out of Steve and he talked about making you change into the Hulk permanently, I don't know if he was lying or if he just changed his mind at the last minute."

"It doesn't matter." Steve reaches for Tony's other hand, and finds a firm grip answering his own, warm and solid around his newly-thin fingers. "He's gone, what's done is done. We can sort out the rest at home. Right?"

Tony looks to Steve-- down at him. There's something familiar and comforting about the way he says 'at home' that makes him smile. "Yeah."

  
\--

  
The trip back through the drainage pipe-- because the palace is huge, and spending time looking for the front door is likely to lead them straight into a group of possibly-hostile, possibly-vengeful servants-- is a long and cramped one, but eventually, the three of them make it outside and into the fresh air.

Night has long since fallen, the moon low and full as if the sky is sagging under its weight, the sounds of chirping crickets and night-dwelling things casting the darkness as distinctly alive and fresh. After days of being cooped up in a laboratory and a prison cell, without the press of crisis to distract from it, there's something comforting and refreshing about being under the open sky with nothing but stars and the beginnings of dew on the leaves. The wind howls across the steep inclines, cool and sweet and thick with the far-away promise of an early summer rain.

Their steps are weary as they walk along the steep incline. If it weren't for the bandages, Tony would put the suit on; as it is, the three of them are on foot, hiking through thick foliage toward the place Steve points out. As expected, it's a much harder trip going up than coming down, but there's nothing to do but press on.

He'd like to be able to call Clint and Natasha, but his radio seems to have suffered a bit in the fight; Steve doesn't mention it. If he does, Tony and Bruce will want to stop and fix it, and if he stops, he knows he'll collapse. He can't afford that now, not when they're this close. They haven't said anything, they haven't even cracked any jokes about it yet, but Steve knows that he's running on their borrowed faith, and for the first time since he picked it up, the shield is heavy on his back. Once he falters, he knows he'll see the same pity in their eyes that everyone used to have, and he'll have to earn that faith back slowly, if at all. So it doesn't matter that his knees ache and his feet are scraping raw in his now-oversized boots, or that his arms feel like they're being pulled out of their sockets when he hauls himself up over a low ledge. As long as he puts one foot in front of the other, he can still--

The ground scatters under his foot, a loose stone crumbling away; the noise that escapes him is thankfully not as undignified as a yelp, but he skids down a few feet, fingers scrabbling for a handhold, but he stops suddenly. Two hands on his back, one just above his waist, the other square between his shoulders, stop him from falling any further, and then hold him up.

"You all right, Cap?" Tony's voice is steady behind him, easing Steve backward slowly so he can get his feet back under him; he's lower on the hill, and Steve ends in something of a crouch. Bruce takes a few long strides to catch up, lightly looking him over for injuries.

There's nothing condescending in the way they touch, but it's the need of it that Steve hates, the fatigue he's almost forgotten, the tightness in the bottom of his lungs. They're this close to going home, and he's swimming in his uniform. "Yeah, I'm fine, you don't have to--"

"We know we don't." Bruce just offers him that kind smile, even if it's a little pale and drawn with the night's endeavors, holding his much-thinner arm in gentle, careful hands.

Tony lightly lets one arm curl around Steve's shoulders, just to hold him for a few seconds. "Don't stand up 'til you're sure you're steady."

He starts to force himself to stand, but where the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak, and he buckles back against Tony's chest before he manages it. Tony's arms pull close around him, and he's steady. Sitting, but steady.

"Don't push yourself so hard, Steve," Bruce tells him. "You've been awake over twenty-four hours, you've been hiking and running and fighting all night; we've had a chance to rest, you haven't." At Tony's questioning, concerned look, he explains, "We left as soon as JARVIS told us he lost you, and I had the post-Hulk blackout."

"I've been asleep or knocked out most of the time I've been here," Tony agrees. "Let's just take a minute, all right?"

"I can still do this." He doesn't really sound like he's convinced himself, but he says the words anyway.

"I know. Honestly? I'm not sure I can." Tony gestures to his arms, and the probably-yards of tape and gauze wrapped around them. "Think I'm down a pint or two. Bruce? Can you--"

"On it." Bruce's voice echoes from somewhere not far off. It makes Steve smile, settles that familiar warmth in the pit of his stomach, watching the two of them communicate without really needing words. He's missed that, these past few weeks.

Steve sags, lets his head drop back against Tony's collarbone. His lungs are on fire, he can feel sweat soaking his forehead and plastering his hair to his skin. "...This reminds me of boot camp," he says, finally.

"Aren't we Mister Nostalgia tonight?" Tony laughs, and there's just enough humor in it to make it sound genuine.

"I'm always Mister Nostalgia." Steve smiles, just a little. "...Maybe when they discharge me, that can be my new coden--"

"Quiet, Steve." Tony pulls him a little closer, shifting a little so that he can sit down too. "Don't talk like that. Remember what you said? _We'll sort it out when we get home_. You said those words, right?"

"Yeah." Steve swallows. "Yeah, I did."

Bruce comes back, sleeves rolled up and barefoot; there's an easy, capable grace to the way he moves, as if he's done something exactly like this many times. It takes Steve a minute to realize that he probably has; the Hulk probably doesn't calm down anywhere in the vicinity of noise and people and civilization. He's careful and steady as he reaches down to help them both up. "This way."

Bruce and Tony both help Steve walk, bracing him on both sides, wordlessly catching him and setting him upright when he stumbles; when Tony falters, his head swimming from blood loss and fatigue, Bruce and Steve are there to prop him back up. Bruce, for his part, manages to guide them safely into the mouth of a shallow, dry cave, determined as if to make up for all the inherent inconveniences of living with the Hulk.

The ground is littered with dried leaves and grass, the stone overhang above it dripping with some kind of clingy, shaggy moss. Bruce leads them toward the back, away from the wind. "It's not perfect," he says. "But I've seen worse, and it should keep us dry."

"It's fine, Bruce, thanks." Tony smiles as he drops down onto the grass, piling Steve half-into his lap as he does; it's not a haystack, but it'll do.

Bruce answers it with a weary smile of his own, and takes up a spot next to him, leaving Steve enough room in the middle to wedge between them. The walls are earth and stone, he knows they'll eat up most of the warmth, and the warmest spot will be the one between himself and Tony. But Steve doesn't take it; he just climbs over to Tony's other side, and nudges him into the middle instead.

Tony lets himself be shoved into the middle, and laughs-- honestly, openly laughs-- draping his arms over his Steve and his Bruce's shoulders to pull them close against his sides. He's covered in deep cuts that throb and ache, and in the back of his mind he's already counting on how to deal with the nightmares he knows Bruce is going to have, what he's going to have to say to Fury to keep him from giving Steve the let-down talk. But none of it matters now, because he's _safe_ , and _they're_ safe, and for the first time in a long, long time, Tony feels like he can relax.

A cave is not a couch, and watching the sun come up over an unfamiliar mountain through the beginnings of a warm, pattering rain is not _Gone with the Wind_ , and a few handfuls of peeled rambutan are not popcorn. But just this once, it's close enough, and sleep claims all three of them before the daylight fills the valley below.

 

 


	12. Chapter 12 - Epilogue/Afterword

"Agent Romanoff."

"Yes, Director?"

Natasha looks down at the operating room, watches a couple of SHIELD medics poking and prodding at Steve's skinny, bony body. She's seen the old photos of what he looked like before the Serum, but seeing him sitting there in the flesh is surreal; she'd expected to pity him when she heard the news, but somehow it's even more compelling when his grace and determination are dogged and frayed at the edges. It's easy to forget that, even with the Serum, he was never really superhuman. Her eyes stray to Clint as he fusses with an arrow, trying not to focus on the unhappy memories she knows are rolling around behind his eyes.

"How are they?" Fury's voice echoes faintly in the observation booth, undercut by the creak of his leather jacket as he folds his arms over his chest. "Does Medical have a report yet?"

"They're almost finished putting stitches in Stark. Banner hasn't said a word to anyone since he arrived, but he's been compliant. Rogers' injuries aren't serious, but they're going to want a lot of tests before they let him go."

"I don't mean physically." He turns just enough to meet her gaze, and she sees a rare, wounded glow of vulnerability. The Director has never minded that the Avengers only trust him in very specific, limited capacities; he needs the world to be safe, not to win popularity contests. That doesn't mean he can casually brush it off when three of Earth's mightiest heroes are brought, bleeding and shock-silent, to his doorstep. "How are they, Natasha?"

"...They're going to recommend counseling for Stark because of the sexual assault, but he's not going to cooperate with any SHIELD personnel without persuasion, and I don't think you should push him on it."

"Why not?"

"Because he has a support network now that he didn't have when he was first profiled; he has what he needs, let him decide when he needs it." She watches the procedure room below them as Steve tugs a grey SHIELD-issue sweatshirt on over his head; it puffs around his thin frame like a marshmallow and it makes her smile. That smile fades when she sees him strain to heft the shield. "You know him; if you push, he'll push back just because it's you."

Fury nods. "Captain Rogers?"

"There's no existing research on how super-soldiers handle not being super-soldiers," she says. "But there are a lot of questions that need answering. Still, he could be worse; he's got friends, now, too, and he can eat better than he did in his own time. Are you going to discharge him? He's still technically on our books."

"... I'll put it down as a temporary leave of absence for medical reasons. I assume Stark and Dr. Banner are going to work on restoring him?"

Clint hitches a shoulder in a lazy sort of shrug, and slides the arrow back into its quiver. "Medical thinks he could just regenerate the Serum on his own the same way normal people slowly regenerate their entire skin one layer at a time, but that could take years, possibly decades. If Stark and Banner can't help that along, we're gonna be out of a Captain for awhile. It's a slim bet either way; if they had the right formula for the Serum, Emil Blonsky wouldn't be on the Psycho Wheaties box."

"And Banner?"

Natasha purses her lips, weighing her knowledge against itself. "...He's in shock. Banner's resilient and cynical, but I'm almost certain he's never consciously taken a human life before. I expect he'll be in for a lot of bad nightmares and anxiety on top of his usual merry-go-round, but I think he'll cope, since he's got.. well. You may be noticing a theme, here, Director. The three of them do much better together than they do apart." She exhales softly, fatigued in a way that runs a little deeper than bruised ribs and split lips, and she doesn't need to meet Clint's eyes to know his answer to the question she hasn't asked, but she does anyway. "... We all do. And I think we've all been away from home long enough."

They share a silence that weighs heavy with something too practical to be sentiment, and too deep to be protocol. Fury turns back to the window and watches Steve sitting on the exam table, solemnly running his fingers along the edge of the shield, over the gleam of scuffed paint.

Steve looks toward the far wall and stands, apparently hearing someone's approach; the double doors swing open, and Tony and Bruce come in. Tony is bandaged properly, and Bruce looks haunted, and Steve is not as stoic as he once was. They exchange a few brisk, brief words before they clasp wrists and forearms, relief loosening their shoulders like heat. Just as Fury is beginning to wonder if their embraces are lasting a little too long, Tony catches Bruce and Steve lays a soft kiss on the corners of each of their mouths, and then nods toward the door.

Fury doesn't comment. He just looks to Natasha and Clint. "As of now, you're both on standby until further notice. Make sure you all get home safe."

Clint tosses Fury a nod and a loose salute; Natasha acknowledges with a graceful dip of her head. The Director turns his attention back to the empty exam room, and doesn't hear them leave.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so ends another installment of the Perspective-verse, after so many months. I'd like to thank everyone for being so patient with me, especially with the long hiatus while I was having health issues, for continuing to share your thoughts with me, for your time and for your efforts. I know this was short, but it was primarily to wrap up this section so I can move on to the next one, which will be soon forthcoming with any luck.
> 
> I want to go and give special thanks, but you can pretty much look down in the kudos and comments; every single one of those people is owed gratitude, because without them I would have no self-esteem or confidence in my writing. 
> 
> As ever, my email is vinesilverlace@gmail.com, please, write and tell me what you think if you're not comfortable with comments, some people are not super comfortable with comment boxes and that is okay. And please, tell me what you'd LIKE to see (more action? more drama? more villainy? Something else?) this series may well be drawing to a close, and although I can't promise that I will be able to stick to your suggestions if you choose to leave them, I do want to know. I don't want anyone to feel left out or unresolved when all is said and done.
> 
> Thank you and please look forward to the 4th installment of this series... as soon as I can figure out a good p-word for the title. :3
> 
> Also, check out the Perspective-verse mix by tumblr's stripandselltheparts! (Seriously do, she makes amazing mixes, and is generally a cool lady of excellence. )
> 
> http://stripandselltheparts.tumblr.com/post/37384692799/christmas-mixes


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